


Until It Sleeps

by malyshka



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Awkward Flirting, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Eventual Romance, F/M, Flashbacks, Friends to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, Nervous Emotional Wreck meets Man Who Hates Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Recovery, Slow Burn, Spouse-is-Dead-and-I-Love-My-Son Club, Survivor Guilt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-03-11 16:40:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13528338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malyshka/pseuds/malyshka
Summary: She's out of time, luck, and mind. Fortunately, there's a mouthy mercenary to watch her back.I wrote something just like this awhile ago, scrapped it, and here it is again. A introspective, slow-burn relationship between the SS and MacCready. They both think a lot. This is my practice attempt at describing organic romance, character development, and the experience of healing psychologically. Lots of awkward and sensitive moments, as I am super feely for these two. All constructive criticism and feedback is gladly welcome.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody like the F!SS would be very, very messed up, I think. The same goes for MacCready. I really want to write them realistically, so I will try to give them room to think, breathe, and recover, rather than push sex and romance on them right away.
> 
> Constructive criticism is 100% invited and welcome. If you like something, let me know so I can get better!

Sɪɴᴄᴇ ʜᴇʀ ʀᴜᴅᴇ ᴀᴡᴀᴋᴇɴɪɴɢ, ᴛʜᴇ Cᴏᴍᴍᴏɴᴡᴇᴀʟᴛʜ had not proved a tender lover, and the bruises consistently forming on her body were evidence of that. It took her a week to fire a gun without it jumping from her hands. It took her a month to actually hit things, which was only sometimes. Then she learned to swallow rat chunks without gagging, and then she formed the habit of never sleeping for more than two or three consecutive hours. Needless to say, Katy was barely scraping by.

The stars were already out when she arrived in Goodneighbor. She didn’t expect it to take so long to reach a dingy fort, but the town was located in probably the worst place ever. Boston had become a warzone in her frozen absence, overflowing with Lovecraftian horror and every kind of ungodly, gut-wrenching creature and zombie. If it weren’t for her light step and the instinctual tendency to scurry like a rat, she’d be chili at the bottom of one of those super mutant stew pots.

But here she was finally, sporting a mop of unwashed hair and a vault suit spattered in blood, dimly lit under the blue glow of Goodneighbor’s neon sign. With her knapsack of loot, she mustered the final burst of energy to drag her boots forward and open the door.

 _In Goodneighbor, two things count: style and body count._ Or, at least that’s what she heard. She possessed neither, but did her best to compose herself and keep her chin up when she walked in.

Could this really be called a town? When Katy caught her first glimpse of Goodneighbor, what came to mind were the images printed in the Foreign Affairs part of the pre-war newspapers, of places like Honduras or cities in the Middle East which suffered some sort of civil or gang conflict. Always they showed the disastrous aftermath of war, the suffering infrastructure, the lack of sanitation, the orphans with footrags and burn marks chasing after strays. Goodneighbor was something like that. Though the streetlights offered nothing but a weak, hazy glow, it was clear from the get-go it was no Diamond City. There was the litter and rubble in gutters, the shambling buildings, the smell of rain, burning gasoline, and roadkill. And no security it seemed, only a few unwashed drifters who didn’t care to lift their heads to her arrival. Katy wondered if it really was any safer in here than back in the Boston ruins. 

Beyond that, the landmarks in the area aroused a vague feeling of familiarity, but not quite. It happened everywhere: a place she once knew, blasted through the filter of 200 years and the apocalypse. Everything looked and felt something like a memory from a dream.

As her eyes scanned, one of the drifters parted from the group and seemed to saunter in her direction. He was scarred and bald, and he wore a stressed leather jacket. Subconsciously Katy pulled the straps of her knapsack tighter to her back, intending to charge past him.

 _“Hey,_ ” the man spoke gruffly, sort of in the way her father used to. She froze as he casually dipped his head to light his cigarette, then he sucked in a lung of smoke. “Hold up there, honey. First time in Goodneighbor?”

She hesitated. Honey? The air hit the sweat on her hands before she nodded.

“Well, you can't go walking around without _insurance,_ ” he rasped through yellow teeth.

Katy swallowed and parted her lips to speak, but nothing came out. What did he have in mind? What was this? What was going to happen to her? Oh God, it was happening, wasn’t it? She made it this far, only to crumble in the clutches of a mugger, or worse. It was all she could do to stare dumbly, speechless, like a deer in headlights.

He growled impatiently. “You fuckin’ deaf, lady?”

She shook her head and squeezed her straps. “I..d-don’t know what y-you mean,” she stuttered, feeling very small. Needles of fear pricked her neck, urging her to go, but where? Back outside to die? She'd barely squeaked by a camp of mutants that camped right outside. Surely she would die. Katy felt she didn’t have the room to breathe; somehow, in some way, his eyes, his gaze was choking the breath from her throat.

“You hand over everything you got in them pockets, and that fancy gadget there too,” he said, his eyes fixing briefly on her Pip-Boy. “Or ‘accidents’ start happening to ya. _Big_ , bloody accidents.”

Would he kill her? Was this that kind of place? Of course it was. Her heart began to race with a spike of adrenaline. She had at least a hundred in loot alone, in scavenged weapons, ammunition, and chems, not counting her actual cap stash (which was quite numerous). She was dead. So dead. Dead if she gave it, dead if she didn’t. With no skills, no money, no weapons, she had no options. And she couldn’t fly by the seat of her pants in parts like these.

“Please...” Was all she could muster, praying frantically from the mind, beginning to back away. Out of the few drifters leaning around, none of them were looking at her. They actively steered their attention elsewhere. “I don’t…" She tried again. "Please...I—”

Leather Jacket grabbed the collar of her jumpsuit and jerked her tiny form up to him, so that her toes were only just brushing the concrete. His breath was revolting. Katy squeezed her eyes shut, and a couple of tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Listen, you brat...”

It was happening. She waited for a blade to touch her neck, for a violent blow to her jaw, for him to rip her things away from her by force. Whatever it was, she was helpless to it.

“Whoah, whoah," said someone from behind herself. Scratchy like a ghoul’s. She struggled to crane her neck and see, yes, a tall ghoul man. His apparel was strangely revolutionary in taste; a long red coat, a tricorn hat, and a flag tied around his waist, but his funny getup was the last thing on her mind.

“Finn, let her go," the ghoul said.

“Sir, please,” Katy breathed, raggedly and broken. “Please help me...”

Leather Jacket tightened his grip, constricting her throat.

“ _Hey_ ,” the ghoul barked again, this time with the tone of an imperative command. As her mugger looked up, she saw the opportunity to free herself; she tried to jerk her knee into his gut and push at his chest, but he was stronger. Instead of wrestling with her, he violently jolted her at the neck, subduing her into paralysis again. An animal in a trap.

Katy whimpered weakly. _Do something._ _Anything._ Her bugged-out gaze begged it of the ghoul.

“Someone steps through the gate the first time, they're a guest. You lay off that extortion crap.”

“What d'you care?” The grip got tighter. “She ain't one of us.”

“No love for your mayor, Finn? I said _let her go_.”

Finn finally did, tossing Katy to the ground. Some of her personal items flew from her bag as she crumpled into a heap, but the pain of scraping the floor was barely a thought. Adrenaline was screaming. _Move! Move! Move!_ Before she could think, before she could see anything else, she was scrambling to her feet and charging away from both of the men.

And so, all of Katy’s senses were aflame. In one burst of energy, she bolted down the only opening she saw, down the block; when she saw that nobody had pursued her, she ducked into a small alleyway and caught the brick wall, breathing hard. She counted to ten, then thirty, then sixty seconds. At two minutes, she still could not be calmed.

Oh good God. She was clutching her heart as it pounded. _Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump,_ at a million beats per second. How he feasted on her with his eyes. How he breathed down her throat. Each time she blinked, his face flashed in her head as though it was still happening. Katy checked the alley again, then the street again, then the alley. Still nobody. She felt the walls and looked for windows and doors. Not even one. She dropped near a dumpster and ensured nothing lurked beneath. No, not even a fly. _Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump,_ in her throat, in her ears and eyes. Oh good God indeed.

There was nothing quite like feeling helpless. This wasn’t her first taste of danger, not by a long shot, but the feeling never changed. Every time she abandoned herself to instinct. Every time she was a coward. This warzone wasn’t truly something you could get used to, was it? Or was paralyzing fear the typical emotion of the average wastelander? And then that thought, that thought which always crossed her mind, crossed her mind again.

_The drone of the news anchor. The hum of the refrigerator. From the bay window, sunlight poured and bred warmth into the living area, and outside, Ms. Rosa’s boy was racing around on his bike. Late spring had yielded lovely weather as of recent._

_Katy emerged from the hall, and seeing her husband on the sofa, she approached him from behind and snaked her white arms around him. “Hello,” she said, planting a kiss as delicate as a flower on his cheek. Having slept in that morning, she was still wearing her maternity nightgown and wore her hair, not yet styled, tamed to her neck. “I missed you,” she continued to nuzzle him. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”_

_Nate’s face was still, his eyes unmoving, though he reached up to touch her face. “Babe,” he said. But opening his mouth was a mistake._

_“Nate,” she instantly pulled away, wrinkling her nose. Her gaze then fell to the glass in his hand._

_“Are you...drinking? Now?”_

_Her husband didn’t move, except to sip on what smelled like scotch. Expressionless. Over on the wet bar, Katy saw an empty space where a fat liquor bottle should be. To make sure she wasn’t crazy, she walked over and inspected their stock. Yes, most certainly the holiday scotch was gone._

_She looked back to him. His face was unshaven and his eyes were heavy. “Nate, why are you drinking so early?”_

_His eyes, under the knit of a mean, angry brow, suddenly flashed at her. There was not an ounce of warmth in them. Rather, they were cold, close to chilling. Never before had she seen this look in him, and instinctively she grabbed the lace collar of her gown and crumpled it in her fist. It was like a rush of cold water over her body, seeing that animalistic look in her own beloved husband._

_The wife tore her gaze away, letting it drop to the floor in silence._

Present-day Katy touched her chest again, where the thumping was still hummingbird speed. Anchorage had come to her.

She took a quick inventory, and cursed herself immediately; her eyeglasses were gone, along with an entire carton of cigarettes and some priceless boxes of ammunition. Those things were practically gold!

Luckily, her personal pack of Grey Tortoise still resided safely in her breast pocket. As matter of habit, she reached into her pocket with shaking, numbed fingers, like she hit a triple shot, and fiddled with her zippo. The wheel chinked and a little yellow flame appeared, casting an eerie glow on her face as she lit herself on up.

Familiarly it burned in her throat. Then she exhaled, long and coolly, expelling smoke into the night air. Her brain was still flooded with survival instinct and fear, but a smoke always smoothed her out, at least a little bit. As her nerves calmed, she became faintly aware of the stinging on her elbows and on her right buttock, from how they had dragged the pavement. They ached to the touch quite badly. Yes, they would bruise.

A few puffs later and her cigarette had been chewed to the filter. She stomped it into the concrete, wiped her eyes for the final time, and checked the street again. No more time for sorrows, worries, or smokes. It was time to find who she came for.

* * *

If anything stood the test of time and nuclear war, it was man’s need for a fix. Therefore it wasn’t terribly difficult to locate the Third Rail, which lay at the heart of town.

Up until roughly 40 years ago, the State street station was just a dark hole in the ground, an old metro whose pre-war supports had given long ago, rendering it inoperative but safely isolated. It began then as a place for junkies to toke up. Later some criminals put up some walls around and established something vaguely resembling a governing body. As Goodneighbor filled with drifters, the metro evolved into a grungy hotspot for the great unwashed of the town.

And it really was. It became nose-wrinkling clear as Katy descended into the Third Rail. Along with cigarette smoke, there stunk the strong musks of cologne and sweat. The lighting was dim, but failed to disguise the mysterious stains on the floors and sofas. In the corner a pretty lady was singing jazz.  She was good. Excellent even, exuding youth and grace with the sway of her sparkly hips. But in the crowd below the stage, everyone looked like they’d been in their exact spots for 200 years. Yellowed teeth. Pungent breath. Clothes that had never seen a bucket of water.

There were places in the Commonwealth that tried to hide the filth, the trash, the rot and neglect. People tried to clean up, like Preston and them in Sanctuary, trying to scrub the floors and sweep the detritus and fortify where bombs destroyed. Not here. Not the Third Rail. It was clear to her and everyone else; it was a den of debauchery and alcoholism. No-one came here with anything wholesome in mind.

And Mrs. Katerina Warne, Harvard honors student, wife of war hero, mother of one, winner of the neighborhood's best lawn, and an active member of the Sanctuary Wives book club, definitely didn’t belong here. That much was clear. But at this point, her fish-out-of-water look was just becoming the shape of her face.

She fished out of her jumpsuit pocket a crumpled note. Actually, it was a napkin, on which the mercenary Hawthorne had so thoughtfully jotted down some information. There was a crudely drawn map of downtown, with big Xs over Faneuil Hall, the red-light district, the old Trinity tower and some others, and scrawled below that, directions and a name.

She approached the bot at the bar. On the wall behind the bar was the endless row of amber-colored bottles, the vices of all men.

“Who’s the singer?” She asked it.

“Magno’lia,” the Mr. Handy replied with Cockney drawl. “Flo’wer of the Third Rail. You buyin’ a beer o’wot?”

“I’m fine,” Katy said, with a polite wave of the hand. Lingering here longer than she needed to was a recipe for trouble. “Do you know where I can find a Mr. _Mack-Reddy_?” She asked, glancing at her napkin.

There was a beat of silence, maybe indignation at her refusal. The bot returned to cleaning chipped glasses. “This i’a place to drink. No’in’ else,” he muttered grumpily.

She got the message. Casually and quietly she slid over a handful of caps, roughly twenty to the eyeball.

“In the backroom,” the Mr. Handy gestured. It took a moment for her to realize she’d been swindled. _Wonderful,_ she thought dismally.

The VIP room was empty, or so she thought until she had come close and heard a harsh exchange of voices. She peeked around the corner and reeled back when she saw figures. 

“. _..the only reason we haven't filled your body full of bullets is that we don't want a war with Goodneighbor. S_ _ee, we respect other people's boundaries... we know how to play the game. It's something you never learned...”_ Low and gruff, clearly threatening. 

“ _Glad to have disappointed you.”_ A new voice. More juvenile. Did his voice falter?

_“You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you're still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?”_

Gunners. The name rung no bells. Maybe another group like the Brotherhood of Steel?

_“You finished?”_

“ _Yeah... we're finished.”_

Katy had a brief second before the two massive, heavily-armed men turned to leave. Fearing they would punish her for spying, she spun around and pretended to fiddle with her Pip-Boy’s dial. Their footsteps lumbered behind her—her stomach began to knot—and then they passed. At the last second, she stole a glance of their backs. Oh no, nope. Not people she would ever want to fuck with, not in a million fucking years.

Hesitation. Katy, what were you doing?  Was this really the crowd you wanted to get involved with? Originally, she was charmed by the very animated and excitable mercenary that frequented the Dugout, but Hawthorne had rejected her offer for employment. Katy must have a really convincing puppy-dog look, because he was eager right after to give a recommendation. MacCready. He hadn't told her much about the Very Important Person she came to see, except that he was damn good at his job.

At the same time, she was forced to remember exactly who it was she was dealing with. The entire concept of a mercenary, of a hired killer violated all of her principles. And Katy Warne was a very principled young woman! She was an avid churchgoer before things went to hell, and now she was mingling with the morally-bankrupt? 

 _Not like I have much of a choice,_ she reasoned back at her conscience. Of course, it all came down to Shaun. It always did. She had risked life and limb to get here, and like hell if she'd chicken out now. Some things had to be done.

After a minute of this deliberation, she gathered the confidence to press on. When the Vault Dweller finally entered the VIP room, all she saw was a bum with no shoes cozy in an armchair. Distraught or drunk he carried his face in his hands, and he otherwise failed to take note of her presence. Katy on the other hand took note of his ratty socks, which had holes in the heels stunk like it was the wrath of God. She pinched her nose—how utterly revolting. Once she had a minute, she decided, she’d be taking a long bath to scrub away every trace of this place.

She glanced around. There was no one else there except him. Katy gave the area a once over, then checked behind her, then looked around again. She inspected the corners and ducked her head to examine the areas beneath the chairs. She even pushed on the open wall to see if a door gave way.

“Look lady—”

Katy jumped, realizing the bum was awake.

“—can you get sloshed someplace else? I ain’t looking for company.”

“I’m not drunk,” she said immediately. “Where can I find…” As she got a better look at him, she noticed a pair of heavy boots underneath his seat, and the very long, very scary looking gun leaning against the wall.

“Find who?” He said grumpily.

“ _You’re_ Mack-Reddy? ” She asked incredulously. His face was unshaven, his dust-brown hair windblown and ungroomed, and he wore a mismatch of outgrown and tattered clothes like a child with scissors and tape got into daddy’s closet.

“ _MacCready,_ ” the man corrected, itching his chin. “I mean, maybe. Why, who’s asking?”

“I’m Katerina Warne,” she introduced herself, extending her hand. He stared at her for a fraction of a second—she had forgotten that manners were no longer commonplace—but at the last moment he obliged. Her dwarf-sized fingers stretched to accommodate his grip. “Hawthorne in Diamond City sent me. He said you were looking for work.”

He nodded, eyeing her up and down. “You uh, you're a Vault Dweller, huh?”

She looked down. What had previously been a bold cobalt blue fabric was washed out and nearly gray, covered in spots and stitches. “Uh, yeah."

“So what are you, some kind of scavver? Need someone watching your back?"

"Something like that," she said. "Who were those guys? The guys you were talking to?"

"Nobodies. You don't make a lot of friends doing what I do. Don't worry about it. Now, you need a gun to watch your back or not?"

Suspicious, wasn't it? Who were the Gunners? Alternatively, did she even have the liberty to be asking such questions? The simple answer was no.

"That's not too much, is it?" She asked, twiddling her thumbs.

"Not at all. Pretty typical actually," he said coolly. “I can handle whatever you throw at me. I just need to know if I can trust you.”

Shly Katy started tugging at her ear, and she opened her mouth preparing to say something clever or smart or just anything to convince him. Something like, _you can’t, that’s part of the risk._ That’s what someone would say if it were the movies, but nothing like that came out. Instead, she squeaked the truth.

“I just...really need your help...”

Why, oh why did she have to sound so helpless? It didn't matter how much she prepared beforehand. She always sounded this way, weak and scared, her voice faltering like she was about to cry. She clasped her hands together, as she used to when preparing to ask her father for permission to leave the house. “Can you teach me about—”—her hands formed finger pistols pulling invisible triggers— “Shooting. Combat, really. All that, in as little time as possible.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not really a private tutor, lady.”

“I’m a fast learner,” she shot back quickly, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Look, I’ve got plenty on my plate. I have things to do. There are people who need me. I'm just asking you keep me alive long enough to take care of it. And I won’t waste your time. I can pay you.”

His eyes flashed with interest, like a dog who glimpses a squirrel in the grass. “Can’t argue with money,” MacCready sat up, cracking his knuckles. “I’m pretty high profile, if I say so myself. You sure you can afford me?”

 _Actually_ , she thought sarcastically. _I’m unfamiliar with the profession of hired killing. What is the going rate for mercenaries these days?_

“What’s, um, your price?” Katy asked instead, pulling out her coin purse.

“Two-fifty up front, non-negotiable. Have you even got that much?”

“Sure,” she agreed immediately. He blinked. Just like that, she readily began to count them out in stacks of ten, and if he would have leaned in to see the contents of her knapsack, he would see that she had no trouble paying at all.

Katy actually had a decent cap stash despite her clumsy, fumbling, and nervous self. Very early in her time here, she learned the value of scavenged goods and spare parts. One box left unturned could mean a hundred caps lost. Everything was worth something. Phones, typewriters, batteries, lightbulbs, old tools, even jewelry. Cigarettes were especially fortunate to find. Even if something was broken, it was usually worth mending (a fact Sturges had done well to teach her). If she had the materials, she could tinker with old fans and fuseboxes and get them (mostly) functional again. Consequently, she was making something of a living. There wasn't a night in the past week where she didn't eat. The only tough part was when there were bodies to loot. She hated taking things from them.

“...two-hundred….two-ten,” she passed him an additional handful. “Twoooo...twenty, here’s that,” she continued. MacCready opened his hands with an avaricious grin as the woman dropped the caps in his palms. When she had counted up to two-fifty, she began to zip up and put her things away.

“I also have a thirty cap equipment fee,” he said suddenly.

Katy squinted. She wasn’t stupid, but she wanted to avoid conflict. “Fine,” she said as she forked them over. Hawthorne had been friendly, but also inflated with ego. Maybe all mercs were like this.

“And a twenty cap processing fee.”

“What?” She cocked her head. “To process what?”

He hesitated before speaking. “Fine, there’s no processing fee. What about my daily pay? I still have to eat if I’m going to be following you around.”

“Twenty a day,” she threw out randomly. She actually had no idea if it was too much or too little, but she had plenty to give and a lot to lose, and people don’t do their job right if they aren’t paid right. “And we can split whatever caps we make in loot,” Katy added.

The sweeter the deal, the tighter his loyalty, right?

“Deal!” He said excitedly, nearly springing out of his seat. Just like that, Katy had employed her very first mercenary. The smile of his eyes and the rosy apples of his cheeks reminded her of a child on Christmas. “Oh man, what a su—I, uh, I mean..." He smiled nervously. "Am I glad you walked in! When are you planning on leaving town, by the way? Do you have a place to be?”

All of her was up and ready to get the hell out of Goodneighbor, especially this gross bar, but her bones were heavy, and her bruises were really starting to throb. “Tomorrow,” she suggested. "I think I saw a hotel just outside of here?"

"Yeah, the Rexford. I've already got a room if you need a place to crash."

"I'll get my own, thanks," she responded quickly. The mercenary shrugged, itching his jaw.

"All right, you're the boss."

Timidly she rocked on her heels. She hesitated, scanning him, the whole smelly unwashed him, up and down. She didn't trust him for a minute—should she have jumped into this so quickly? No, no time to second-guess yourself now. If you keep doing that, you’ll end up actually dead instead of just close to it.

Katy still needed to learn: her habit to overthink would kill her faster than the raiders would. With that, without much else to say, she curtsied her awkward goodnight, spun on her heels, and beelined to the hotel. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MacCready thinks about his circumstances in the brief moment before Sole greets him. A short chapter.

What the fuck did Winlock think he was going to do? Honestly, what a piece of shit, him and Barnes both. He had it up to [insert hand in the midair] _here_. The next time they tried to bully him, he didn’t care who saw. He’d kill them both.

When he saw that they’d left, Mac slouched into the chair, letting his gunner cap fall over his eyes. He was seething with anger, but he didn't let it show. Between his knees he cradled an almost-empty bottle of bourbon, though admittedly he hadn’t much more than a sip. He wondered if he ought to use it to induce a nap before Charlie busted in to drag him outside by the coat. The prospect seemed tempting.

He was gearing himself up to accept the night as a waste. No clients, no cash. This freelance stuff was really fucking annoying. He fondled the measly stash of caps in his satchel. Very little chinking. Was there even enough for a bite to eat? Fucking hell. And what worse, he knew his pennilessness wasn't temporary. That visit from Winlock and his lapdog meant he was done here. Everyone had seen them in the same room with Gunners. The talk alone killed all his clientele. He might as well get the fuck out of Goodneighbor by morning and find some place else, a place skeezier or dirtier, a place where his name wasn’t shit. If it meant hundreds of miles west, then so be it. He learned from a young age that you had to make your own fuckin' way.

In the bass of Magnolia's music, he stared at the wall attempting to cool his own self. What a useless jackass Duncan's father was. With that thought, a horde of feelings and images began to bubble to the surface. No. Not now. Don’t you dare, you piece of shit. Don't fucking do it. It’s pathetic!

But oh, he was thinking it. He couldn't stop himself. The floating, gleeful sensation came over him whenever he remembered that tender moment. Duncan’s hearty little screams, the twitching of new life drenched in blood and vernix, feeling his tiny little heartbeat thumping like a rabbit’s foot. When he smelled the top of his head, he knew he had to protect him. Though he looked the same, the day his son was born he became a fundamentally different person. A father.

Mac liked to think on it. It helped on lonely nights like this, when he was all alone with his brain. But as always, it backfired, because thoughts of Duncan entailed her too.

After Lucy died, Mac was a different strain of man in a different kind of way. The images circuited his brain in repeated synapses, the cries. Did you know skin made a sound when it tore? And he had come to terms with the scene now, leaving her like that. But the death itself was a blow, one that rocketed into his chest and caused physical agony, as if his ribs were toothpicks and a bowling ball smashed through them a winning strike. His heart broke and ceased to be a beating, organic thing. He was a spinning glass ball on the tip of someone’s finger, and it had slipped and shattered, and it couldn’t ever spin again.

Isn’t that just so sappy? So pathetic? Fuck, Mac, you could be a poet.

And the feeling never left. It only dulled with alcohol or adrenaline. And then it spiked when the little reminders came in, like seeing a woman who resembled her from behind, or on the rare occasion he saw a young child. Then all his body’s blood would pool and weigh him to the floor. It was the realest, most unloving part of the world he’d ever experienced.

He tilted the bourbon up. An intoxicating sip wrinkled his nose and burned disgustingly down his throat. When he lowered it, he sensed these painful thoughts escape past his lips and into the vessel, where hopefully they would sit still. Magnolia stopped singing for a second, probably to grab a drink before her next song, and he sat uncomfortably in silence.

God, he fucking hated this quiet.

He moved his hand to his chest. Beneath his fingerpads he sensed his own heartbeat, the center of his own life force, but the crushing, pulverizing damage still bled openly and hurt heavily. MacCready’s brow scrunched up and shut his eyes in straining furious effort. Mac, you sappy pathetic piece of shit! Do not cry! Men do _not_ fucking cry! His fingers dug into his eyes, trying to stall them as best as he could.

Then there was the squeak of a boot. He didn't look up. Whoever it was, he definitely did not want to fucking deal with right now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katy wakes up and mopes. Later that day, Mac sees Katy at her natural best.

The sun tried, and inevitably failed to break the thick layer of dust in the windows of the Rexford the next morning. The weather was pleasantly cool rather than broiling, and overhead plumed clouds like drops of white ink spilled in a cup of water. It was a good morning with crisp, fine air, like the mornings centuries ago when the ozone layer wasn’t corroded by excessive nitric oxide via nuclear holocaust.

These days she hardly slept for long, which was a habit conditioned by the unpredictable nature of the new world. When she did get the chance to close her eyes for more than five minutes, the freakish nightmares would splash ice water in her face and she would pitch forward from her spot. Nevermind what that meant for her psyche. It was an awful toll on the other Greek term, the bodily  _soma,_  that was so bad. It made a person sick and weary, and it seemed she trudged each day and night with a million more tons added to her frail bones.

But when Katy stirred awake, her first thought was of relief—no troubling dreams had intervened in the night. Without opening her eyes, she attempted to place her surroundings. The comfort of a firm mattress. The smell of musty, stagnant air. She didn’t make a peep, though she was confused and remained still. She remembered a slumber party—was she fourteen? Fifteen?—and she was the first to rise before the other girls, so she awkwardly feigned sleep until someone would wake up with her. 

Detecting that all of her favorite limbs were intact, Katy sat up and rubbed her face of drowsy tears. Oh, how delightful was a clear, peaceful head. Even the soreness she accrued in the week had somewhat ebbed away. Katy remembered vaguely crashing into bed with her bones like sandbags, welcoming rest with open, tired arms. It felt as though her body had drunk a tall glass of water after a drought. 

The room looked different in the light. The musty Rexford suite was old but spruced up as much as it could be. Battered antique furniture eaten with age. Cushions and wallpaper stained black with nuclear fallout. Moth-eaten curtains draped over dark glass windows, which were hastily nailed over with boards and heavy with grime.

Across the floor was a vanity mirror, in which she caught her own eye. Previously a vivacious blonde coiffe, her hair was now cropped crudely at the shoulder, loose from the band, and her eyes and cheeks were sunken with hunger. Such was the typical starven wastelander look.

She shrugged off her blanket and grabbed her Vault suit, which was hanging on the bedpost, and zipped it on over her under layers.

Wait a second. Her things. She scanned the room with a pang of anxiety, relieved only when she discovered them under the bed. She snatched it and took quick inventory. Check. Check. Check. Nothing was stolen. Then grabbed her coin purse and kneaded it, satisfied at the sound of chinking caps. Check. Then at last, she remembered the door was locked, and she realized her panic was unfounded from the start.

Everything was as it was supposed to be, it seemed. Except of course there was the gut feeling. The same gut feeling she’d had since the Vault. It was rotten at the core, the same feeling you might get realizing you left your child at school, or that your term paper should have been turned in yesterday. It pierced her belly like an illness causing her to clutch at her abdomen. It took her months to articulate what it was. The permeating sense of loss.

Along with this, she dealt with the effects of her trauma. Just like people who lose a body part, Katy sometimes experienced “phantom pains.” She’d wake up wound in Nate’s arms, only for a cool breeze to hit her neck and dissolve him. She’d see him flickering in the doorway like a projector film, or manifesting in the skeletal faces of pre-war corpses. Every time, there was an odd mix of glee and dread, which left her dumbfounded and befuddled. Thankfully the room was free of such demons, at least for now.

She sat there, clutching her belly, marinating in the awful pinching, aching feeling. Grief. Her mind was not quite parallel with reality yet, and she was strangely aware of this, like the soldier who felt the boot on his missing leg. Was this a permanent feeling, she wondered? Or would it pass with time? Perhaps it was the consequence of living in a time that wasn't hers. Perhaps spirits were not meant for such things. It was as though she was freshly beheaded, and her mind knew something was very wrong, but it hadn't yet recognized the violent disconnect from the body.

Katy sat in her uneasiness for another moment, consciously summoning the strength to push the feeling away. Finally, she forced movement through her muscles and stepped toward the window. This was a new morning, a different, calm, and peaceful morning, and she could not waste any more of it moping like this with awful feelings and memories of nightmares. Reaching through the nailed boards, she thumbed away a smudge of dirt. That morning sunlight penetrated the room through her little mark, beaming yellow and warm. She took a final moment to reflect on her thoughts, her grief about Nate and Shaun. Then, shutting the metaphorical drawer in her mind’s file cabinet, she tucked away her sadness in a neat fashion. Enough of that.

The door to MacCready’s room flew open, hitting the wall with a thud, followed by a groan. Right. This was him—she glanced at his face, half of which was pressed into a pillow—yeah, it was MacCready. This greedy, gross-smelling manchild was her hope for survival.

One step inside, and her toes clattered a couple of bottles on the floor, and her next step landed on—oh, a t-shirt strewn and wrinkled in a heap. Come to think about it, the room was like hers when she was sixteen. Some dirty clothes hung over a chair, plastic containers stacked on the end table, some more on the dresser. Also, was that food? With mold on it? On the floor?

“Mother Mary,” she said softly, “Do you really live like this?”

MacCready didn't budge. Somehow, he hadn't quite stirred up yet. She spotted his rifle at the foot of the bed, near his head. “That’s so...dangerous,” she said to herself again, moving to take it. “Why do you sleep with it…?”

It was heavy. She held it in two hands stiffly outward, weighing it like a foreign artifact. Her hand curled around the skinny black barrel. Her thumb fingered the unburnished metal, marred with little scuffs and scratches. In her other hand she held the stock, which was likely shiny and new at one point, but was now duct taped to hell.

_“Morgan's Riflemen, commanded by General Daniel Morgan,” spoke the eloquent Professor Corrigan. The pencils were busy, particularly the blonde in the front row whose ears were high-tuned. “Cutting edge,” he boomed. “Americans have always been the inventive, the creative, the ambitious everyman...that’s Tocqueville, though, we won’t get into that. The Riflemen were—put down your hands, I will answer questions later—the Riflemen used, well, rifles, which was technology hardly common at the time. Muskets shot tiny cannonballs, crudely, usually brash. Remember polite war? You had to fire into a crowd to really hit somebody. But the rifles had a spinning barrel that allowed accuracy ten times more than typical troops.”_

_“Imagine,” his voice dropped a notch in volume as his mind engaged the fantasy. “Americans knew the terrain. The British outnumbered them, but if you spread out in the woods and spied from the trees, if you didn’t make yourself obvious...When the Redcoats came marching, the Americans could mask themselves in the foliage and...well, make things a lot more red.”_

Katy raised the gun to her eye, placing one of the scattered bottles in the scope. Closing one eye, with the stock in her arm, she pretended she was a revolutionary rifleman, placing the crosshairs right on the neck of a British soldier (er, the bottle).

“You're holding it wrong.”

The gun leapt from her hands, and she scrambled to pull it back down. “Oh—I was just—um—”

He was turning over on his side, casting a dazed, but amused expression.

She sighed. “Sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be, just, hand me something to drink. My head is killing me.”

“Oh, sure," she said, relieved. "No problem. Here you go." She put down the rifle and passed him her canteen.

“Thanks.”

MacCready’s accessories were in the room, including his hat hung atop a shadeless lamp, but he was only in his T-shirt (probably a white one when it was first made) and those green army briefs. In the natural light, she saw the tans of his toned, scarred arms exposed. He unscrewed the cap and tossed his head back, downing about a quart of purified water in a few gulps. He thanked her again and wiped the drop that escaped the corner of his mouth.

Katy was thirsty too, but she’d just refill it later. She watched him sit up and pull on his socks. For roughly thirty seconds, she watched him lace up his shoes.

Then out of the blue, he started giving her a funny look. His eyes squinted and his lips pursed. Like he was thinking hard.

"What's the matter?" Katy asked, equally confused.

"Uh..." He trailed. "Did we..."

She looked at him, at his quizzical expression. In the light, she saw his eyes were blue. Katy glanced down at herself, then back to him.

“ _Oh_ ," she realized."What, no. No, no. I got a room across the hall. Did you think we—” She put her hands on her hips in indignation, a little flushed at the suggestion. “ _That’s_ not what you’re expecting, is it? If so, I’ll take my caps back—”

“—no, no, gosh, no. Calm down. I’m not like that. I just, you were giving me this look, and..." He sighed, waving his hand. "Nevermind. Sorry."

"Does your mind always go into the gutter, Mister MacCready?"

"Oh come on. You can't blame me. It's not every day I wake up with a woman in my bedroom," he chuckled. "And just call me MacCready."

Her eyes narrowed into slits. Typical wasteland fodder, made indecent by the evolving lack of standards in modern society. Papa would be aghast that she was ever spending her company with this type of man.

She folded her arms under her chest. "We should get going. Are you hungry?"

"A little."

Naturally, Katy’s wifely instincts invoked a visit to her bag in the other room, returning with her personal supply of Sugar Bombs. His eyes lit up.

“Oh man.” He took the box, tore the seal, and scooped a handful of cereal puffs into his mouth with his dirty, grubby hands. His fingernails were dark and his knuckles were ashy and split. “Gee, thanks Boss,” he said munching happily. He turned the box to her. “You don’t want any?”

She touched her stomach. “No, that’s fine. I can’t eat early in the morning.” Katy smiled nervously, a moment away from reeling in revulsion. Was he an animal?

* * *

They stopped by Daisy's in the morning for a little trading. Katy politely asked if she sold eyeglasses, to which the merchant pursed her melted lips and shook her head. Such was not a popular or readily available commodity. Katy naturally seemed very disappointed by this news. "And I had to lose my last pair," she sighed softly. 

The first half of the day was boring and uneventful, spent picking through buildings and dumpsters until Mac thought his head would explode. She grinded continuously through trunk after garbage bin with the utmost focus--and she was anything but lazy, pilfering every nook, cranny, and crevice until she had tagged every item as trash or treasure. Meanwhile, the two only shared idle chatter, punctuated by Katy muttering comments on an item of interest. "Always did want one of these," she had told a rusty, paint-chipped typewriter. "How sad," she whispered to a book whose pages were all but scorched. It was dull work, but MacCready didn't dare complain. A paid job was a paid job, after all.

Leaning with a cigarette, he observed as she pulled open drawers and tore up shelves. They were investigating an old town home on the north end of Boston, just across the harbor from Cambridge, and the day was warm as it always was.

"Hand me that crowbar," Katy told him, pulling her mussy blonde hair back.

He handed it over. She proceeded to insert it into cracks in the floor planks, in what seemed to be the opening of a cellar trap door. With her best effort she tried to pry it open. A minute of muscle flexing later, the rotted wood burst open access to the dark, dank space beneath. Katy dropped the crowbar with a clang. "Phew," she wiped her brow.

From beneath the floor was an eerie hiss, like that of a cat. But Mac knew better than to assume.

"I don't know if you wanna go down there," he warned.

"Just let me see," Katy returned. "We might be the first to find it in two hundred years. Who knows what could be down here?"

"All right..." he said hesitantly. Mac's thoughts hadn't yet formed a consensus on the her yet, but he knew she was weird. Either she was a looney, or just silly ignorant. Her only skills seemed to be running and hiding. Occasionally she appeared to know a thing or two. But now? Now she was just being dumb. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew the only thing in cellars were ferals and fungus.

She dropped to her knees and switched on her Pip-Boy light, but the weak green glow did nothing to dispel the darkness. She lowered herself onto her hands, dipping her head to listen for the noise again. There were a few moments of suspenseful quiet as Mac felt his stomach clench.

It happened in a flash. Suddenly the Vaultie leapt up and screamed, withdrawing her pistol and firing at random into the floor. The adrenaline hit him fast--MacCready had his rifle jutting into his arm, raised to fire, looking in panic for whatever ungodly creature they had unearthed. "Get back!" He shouted over the flash and sound of her firearm.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Bullet holes freckled the flooring. She was squeezing her eyes and firing without sense, and he was trying to neutralize the threat without getting shot.

He saw it: a little dark blur flung itself into the light and hissed viciously. He tensed his finger over the trigger.

But then he saw the fluttering of beetle-brown wings, and the radroach hissed in fear once again. When a second radroach emerged from the cellar, Mac lowered his rifle and jumped back to avoid a gunshot injury. "What are you doing?! _Stop!_ Stop shooting!"

Katy backed into the corner of room, firing shots that made his ears ring until her gun clicked. He watched bewildered as she screeched for help and crawled up onto a piece of furniture. The look in her eyes was wild with fear. " _Do_ something!" She flailed her blue arms.

MacCready slung his rifle over his shoulder, exchanging with her an expression of complete disbelief. Two powerful stomps later, and the wet squishy roach remains were smeared to the wood. Meanwhile, Katy had armed herself with a shadeless lamp and was clutching it against her breast like it was her baby.

"Son of a..." he clenching his jaw and recomposed himself. "Jeez, Boss. What are you, crazy?"

She couldn't muster words, only a brief squeak. He looked on his employer with incredulous wild gaze, then back at his slime-coated boots. Gross, but nothing he hadn't seen before. When he lifted his head, she was covering her face in disgust.

Surely nobody could be this out of touch, could they? 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eating noodles. Short chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tweaked chapter 3. If you haven't read it since, it might be a good idea to do so, chronologically speaking. Thank you as always for your comments and kudos!

 

"Here," Mac said, pushing his own gun into her arms. "We're shooting. Now."

"Here? It's so open."

"There's no place better to do it, Boss. You need the help."

"We should have gone in that attic! Why did you just drag me out of there? I'm _paying_ you, you know!"

"No," he shook his head. "I am  _not_ putting my a-- _butt_ on the line if that's how you respond to threats. You nearly killed us both. They were just freaking radroaches."

" _Huge_ radroaches!" She cried.

"Doesn't flippin' matter," MacCready huffed. "Come on, Hotshot. Class begins now. Just show me what you've got already."

"What am I even aiming for? There are only trees."

The merc-turned-tutor rubbed his chin, glancing around at the outskirts area of town where he had led her. "Hold on," he paused. "I _think_ I have an idea..."

* * *

 

Three, maybe four hours later, as the sun began to dip into dusk, Katy reloaded the rifle for the umpteenth time. So far, that was the only thing she had mastered. She winked an eye as she raised the sights of MacCready’s rifle. A salvaged mannequin had been set up against a few trees as a practice target. It had barely been touched during the whole lesson, which was just dragging on at this point. As the butt of the gun wedged in the fleshy part of her right arm, she gently moved her finger over the trigger. Click, boom; the gun’s recoil jerked painfully into her shoulder, and the shot was sent rocketing into the atmosphere.

Hours of this, and nothing had changed. She grumbled and resisted the urge to shout in anguish.

“You’re still holding it wrong,” MacCready joked, shaking his head. “Come on, let me show you.” From behind he put his arms around her, and he laid his hands over her hold on the rifle. Katy stiffened her back and tightened the gun to her body, causing her to steady it against her shoulder rather than her arm this time.

“MacCready,” she warned mildly. Why did he have to get so close? “You’re not helping. Just let me try again.”

Instantly he removed his arms and stepped back, hands in the air. “Okay, okay. But here,” he touched her firing hand and shifted her fingers. “Have a pistol grip with that hand. Steady now. Ideally you've have something to rest it on, but right now you really just have to learn to shoot from the hip.”

Katy raised the weapon, lined up her sights with the target. Click, boom; the recoil of the gun was absorbed by her whole body this time, allowing the shot to fly right on target, planting a bullet in its plastic chest.

MacCready smirked. He ought to have said I told you so, except he didn’t. Instead, he clapped his hands and laughed. “See? Good posture and position is everything.”

Her jaw locked and unlocked, refraining from the rude acidic remarks bubbling at her lips. She hated being criticized. She hated it all her life, from her father to her teachers, and though she ought to have known better she never grew out of it. Her pride would puff up so large and inflamed that it clouded her judgement, and it only got worse since her surfacing.

Maybe it was the heat, or that her husband was dead, but post-war Katy found she was short-fused with people once she wasn’t completely afraid of them. It hadn't been long, the ice was broken, and she was very quickly getting fed up with his filthy habits. He was disgusting and unbelievably cocky. Yes, she knew she had sought him out, and yes, she knew she'd be done without his services. But damn it, if he couldn’t cock that cap a little less...cockier...

“All right, Hotshot,” he lauded playfully, clearly enjoying himself. Katy wanted to hit him. “Go again. Try for the head.”

Katy flexed the muscles in her abdomen and reluctantly raised MacCready’s rifle again. The stock in her shoulder, pistol grip on her shooting hand, steady...Click, boom; a bit a pain in her shoulder this time as the shot missed and hit the small hill behind the mannequin, with a little poof of dirt.

“Now your pull is off.”

“Pull?

“Your trigger pull.”

He reached forward and touched her trigger finger. Katy was clutching the gun as if for dear life.

“Hey now,” he coaxed. “Don’t have to have a deathgrip. It won’t make people, you know, _deader._ Relax.”

She did, but with angst.

“Okay, look. You have to pull the trigger straight back. Like you’re pressing rather than pulling."

"That's the same thing!"

"No, it's not," he insisted. "When you’re doing it, you move the whole weapon, which changes where the shot lands. You need to press it while being still.”

Katy repeated her performance, but the bullet’s trajectory sliced into the sky again. "Fuck," she couldn't help but whisper. 

“Just listen to what I’m saying, Boss” the merc said impatiently. “Stop being so, so _tense_.”

“Then you try,” she said through gritting teeth, jabbing the weapon into his arms.

“Okay...”

Katy folded her arms and watched. Expertly he first reloaded the rifle with swift, deft fingers, like an art, and upon the last click, he raised the sights as naturally as a breath and fired. The mannequin shifted a bit as his shot landed in its forehead.

“Now you," he said.

Click, boom; click, boom; click, boom; all bad shots. Why couldn’t she get this?

"You're jerking the trigger again."

"I'm trying _._ I'm just not getting it. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this."

"You're not doing anything I'm saying," MacCready rolled his eyes. "It'd be great if you just frickin' listened to me. Fix your trigger pull. That's half the work right there.”

“But I am!" She stomped the dirt. "I _am_ listening. What does that even mean? Trigger pull? That doesn't help! I don't know what you're talking about!”

Mac gritted his teeth together. "Then. Listen. To. What. I'm. Saying."

“MacCready. You’ve been doing this forever, right? I’ve been doing this two seconds by comparison.”

“So? You’re doing fine for a beginner. You’d do better if you just listened to me and stopped the sh--I mean, _bad_ attitude...”

Katy was grinding her jaw into the bone. “How long have you been shooting, again?”

“Since I was a kid. I taught myself.”

“Of  _course_ you have _,_ " she bit. "I'm the only one in this hellhole that _hasn't_ been shooting from the womb.”

"Just calm down. You won't get better acting like a brat."

"A brat? I'm not being a _brat._ You're just not teaching me right."

"Oh come on," he stood with his arms folded, the elbows of his dirty drifter jacket crinkling. "Don't be like that. I don't have to be teaching this, you know."

"I don't have to be paying you!" She spit back. Her whole self was on edge, just about ready to slap him silly if he stepped just a bit closer.

"You want me out of here?" He asked, his tone biting harder by the second. "You want me gone? I can leave right now if you want me to. I'll even give you your two-fifty back."

The expression on Katy's face quickly fell away to one of panic. No. She needed him. What was she doing?

"That's...that's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

"I was just saying...I just...” Katy frowned and turned away, feeling her face get a little hot. She absolutely hated admitting she was wrong. “Look, don't go. You're good and I...I'm just pissed I'm not getting better.”

Suddenly then, MacCready looked at her without saying a thing. He looked at her with the kind of confused, perhaps bewildered look that you give to a robot gone haywire or a person gone mad. It wasn’t a cruel look. It wasn’t the look Katy’s father used to give, nor the look her teachers used to give, but it was inquisitive, questioning, wondering. His brows, untrimmed as they were, furrowed in brief thought, and she saw his tongue linger at the front of his teeth and stay rigid there like a serpent preparing to attack, or in this case, wondering what to say. Katy was not sure if she liked the look. He was viewing her as crazy, as strange, just as everyone else did all the time. Except now, he was her insurance, and she couldn't just leave. 

Then, contrary to what she expected, he laughed. Out loud. Throatily and heartily.

"What?" She asked, unclenching her fists. "What is it? What's so funny?"

"You..." he grinned. "You think I'm good?"

If her eyes rolled any harder, her optic nerves would have snapped from the sheer force. "God, get over yourself," she said sarcastically with the wave of her hand.

"You think I'm good!"

"Yeah, whatever," Katy waved her hand as if to swat away a fly. "Maybe we should just stop now."

"Hey, no no no," MacCready shook his head. "No. Aim again. Come on. Try one more time, let me help now."

"I guess."

She raised the gun, going over her mental checklist of factors. Pistol grip. Stock in her shoulder. Steady, steady, steady, line up the sights, pause your breathing...remember the trigger _press..._

MacCready’s arms curled around her frame again, like a bat’s wings. His back hunched to match her posture and make up their height difference. Instantly she tightened her grip. 

"You think I'm good," he whispered suddenly, overflowing now with his own narcissism.

" _MacCready..."_

"I'll shut up. Go on now. Remember. Relax. Take a deep breath.”

She sucked in a balloon of air, feeling her shoulders expand within MacCready’s enfoldment, and then her breath exited completely. He squeezed slightly in preparation for the recoil. She winked an eye and stilled herself in her mind. Her heartbeat started to pulse in her head. Cool, sweet deep breaths.

Click, boom. She absorbed the recoil against her shoulder, but MacCready's hold kept her from jolting it up. The piercing shot had hit the mannequin right between its plastic eyes. Katy watched as her shot knocked the entire figure off balance into a bush of dead brush.

“Yes!” Katy squealed immediately. “Yes! Look at that! You see that?”

MacCready couldn’t help but join in on her radiating glee. He clapped a hand on her shoulder in warm laughter. “Look! Told you to trust me.”

She flashed him a wide smile, the wispy hair falling out of her bun bouncing with her. All of that former tension had dissolved with one success. Katy pumped the gun into the air with both hands, exhilarated like a mountain breeze. “Gosh, what a rush!”

“Don’t get too excited, Hotshot. We'll do moving targets tomorrow." 

She smirked back at him, clearly satisfied with herself and her progress, even if was only a couple of shots. Off on the horizon, as the sun began to sink, the sky tinted glowing orange.

Katy bent to reach into her knapsack and pull out two warm bottles of Nuka-Cola, stilled capped and sealed from their day in the factory. She untwisted one and offered it with a soft smile. "Here. A small thank you."

Of course, MacCready took the sugary beverage with childlike delight. "Cheers," he said, clinking bottles.

She paused, observing quietly as he tipped up the bottle, drank greedily, then wiped his face.  "Cheers to you too, MacCready," she nodded, lifting the glass to her lips.

* * *

That night, Katy and MacCready set up camp underneath a bridge, snacked on Fancy Lads, and took turns sleeping. They made it to Diamond City the next day, only after some morning lessons involving the mannequin, a rope, and a high tree branch. While she couldn’t hit the moving target with the rifle (“Too fast! Nobody moves that fast!”), MacCready instead tutored her in some proper pistol maneuvers with the 10 millimeter (“The gun isn’t jamming, it’s _empty,_ Hotshot.”).

The Diamond City gate was lifting with metal screech. Beneath the helmets of their typical umpire garb, the security guards trained their eyes on the two newcomers.

“Welcome to the Green Jewel. Keep your weapons holstered,” they nodded.

The pair saluted with a quick firm nod each and advanced inside, where light glinted off the shantytown metal into their eyes. Mac lifted his hat to wipe the accumulating perspiration from his brow.

Their shoes hit the metal stairs in a tempo. Katy’s nearly-spilling bag of parts clattered and clanged on its own. When they reached the marketplace, they split without saying a word; MacCready beelined for the noodles, whilst she went to eye up the wares of the market and do her bidding.

“Mrs. Warne,” a man greeted her from afar as she approached his stall. He was short, with a wiry black moustache and dark skin. “Are you doing well? Have anything for me?”

“I am,” Katy lied. She heaved her bag onto the counter and began unloading her arsenal. “Thanks for asking, Arturo. And I do, right here.”

“Wonderful, wonderful...” His eyes roved the goods excitedly. As D.C.'s primary weapons dealer and gun hobbyist, he always welcomed Katy's wealth of junk to supply him with raw parts. He leaned in, shifted his eyes around his stall, and his voice suddenly dropped low.

“Have you...have you found anything about your son?”

Bracing a tight-lipped smile, she shook her head.

It was true. She was reasonably known by the townspeople, save for the snobs in the upper stands. Something about her made her stick out, maybe the clueless look, maybe the blue suit. But even if she wore rags and looked mean, Katy was easily plucked from the crowd; she did not have the same bend to her spine, or that worn out, impoverished look in her face. As it seemed the apocalypse had beaten nearly everybody else into submission, there was some spirit or motivation in Katy not yet killed.

But that wasn’t all. Thanks to a spunky little reporter and a lapse in judgement, the entire city knew her story, including her previous status as an ice cube. Originally she hoped it would help her garner support to find Shaun, but times weren’t like before, not at all. People couldn’t spare the minute to help, only to ogle her and to talk about her. Arturo wasn’t mean-spirited. Neither were most of them. But God, she hated being ogled.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” he continued, tapping the surface in a manner which could be described as nervous. “Well uh, well...let me show you something I’ve been working on. I think you’ll like it.”

Katy shook her head. “Please, no thank you Mr. Rodriguez. I’d just like caps for these things today.”  
  
“Mrs. Warne, you don’t know what you’re missing,” he insisted. Before she could object again, he lifted an artifact from beneath the counter. A long, shiny black rifle, hardly bruised and awfully scary looking.

“What’s this?”

“Beautiful, isn’t it? She’s a special find. Produced pre-war. Semi-automatic, long range, and eats fifty calibers.”

“It’s huge,” she stared. It was probably half her height. “I don’t know if I can even pick it up.”

“Of course you can. Go ahead and try. A hardy woman needs a hardy weapon, right?”

“Not sure I would describe myself that way," she said sheepishly.

“Nonsense. You're a professional, right? So is this. She can chew right through brick. Stronger than anything you’ll salvage, I’ll bet you that, and one of the last of her kind. Go on and pick it up.”

Katy reached to touch it, fingering its many grooves and parts. It was infinitely more complicated than she was capable of understanding. She was no gun enthusiast, but even to her it had obvious value. Piqued with curiosity, she reached underneath and lifted the beast; her arms cried at the mere weight as she took it horizontal against her chest. It was larger than her and difficult to hold. But in a similar way, there was some great sense of power that came from holding a professional deadly weapon. 

“This is what keeps people alive. With all the things you bring me, you might want to think about insurance." Arturo's eyes dropped to her holstered pistol. "Especially if that's all you're packing."

"Oh..." She looked down at her sidearm, which did seem pretty tiny now, even if he was just giving a sales pitch.

Feeling her arms droop from the weight, Katy hoisted it again to her breast. There was a beat of pure contemplation on whether such a thing would suit her. A hardy woman needs a hardy weapon, as he said, and she couldn't exactly say she had mastered the Commonwealth recently. The thing _was_ terribly heavy, and the pull _was_ dragging her to the earth. In fact, imagine the recoil on this thing--it might just blast her to heaven!

But...(and it always came back to a 'but'), that just meant it was an item of strength. The world had two types of people, Papa always said. People who settled, and people who refused to settle. Either you let your circumstances swallow you, or you become the master of them.

"Looking dangerous! I’ll sell you the scope, sling, and mount for a steal," he added with a grin. 

“I suppose I’ll have to take it then,” she concluded. The smile on Arturo’s face was magic. His eyebrows raised in brief surprise, perhaps not so used to that easy of a sale. Then again, no one was used to interacting with Katy Warne.

It wasn’t long after, and Katy found MacCready at the counter still slurping like there was no tomorrow. He was still in his grungy apocalyptic rags, that grimy old drifter, muddied trousers, and his scarf pulled loosely from his neck.

“I’ll have seconds!” He said giddily, eagerly accepting the hot bowl from Takahashi’s metal clamps.

 _Boys,_ she thought in humor. They seemed to consume their body weight in dinner if you let them.

“Hungry much?” She asked, dropping a drawstring pouch of caps on the counter. It was his payout.

“Mmhm, thanks” Mac glanced up with round, stuffed cheeks and swallowed. He pounded his chest in brief esophageal distress before he snatched the pouch into her pockets. “Good sh—stuff,” he said finally, “I missed this. Now, what the heck is _that?_ ”

His eyes were glaring at the monstrous sniper rifle slung on her shoulder. The mass of the object alone was comical in relation to its small and mousy new owner.

“I just got it,” she patted it proudly. “Something you can teach me on, I hope.”

He snorted. “Oh sure I can. Sure you can wield that in just two arms? You sure you don’t need a third or fourth?”

“I’m sure,” Katy rolled her eyes. But she wasn't really sure at all. She was already struggling with the weight on her shoulder.

She took the seat next to him and ordered a bowl. Dusting off her area, she noticed it; the newspaper, Publick Occurrences, folded neatly by his glass. Katy didn’t need her glasses to know which issue it was. She looked nervously at MacCready, who was drinking from the bowl as flecks of hot broth spilled on his front.

There was a quick pinch of panic in her tummy. Had he read it? She glanced back and forth, blinking fast. No, he couldn't have. He would have been asking by now, right?

“You uh,” she said, staring at the text. Though she didn't have her reading glasses, she could faintly make out the shapes of letters of  _Woman_ from embossed title  _Woman Out of Time._ Covertly, as he buried his face in his dish, she grabbed it quietly and tucked it between her legs. “You...come here a lot?”  
  
“Used to,” he shrugged casually. “Long before you, probably. Figure you're not from the Commonwealth, right?”

She shook her head, repressing the sardonic laugh lingering somewhere in her gut. If only he knew.

Takahashi placed the hot bowl in front of her, the edge of which had a small chip. Her fork twirled in the bed of pasta slowly as the steam wafted in her face. She closed her eyes and breathed in the seasoning. Oh, how divine and lovely was the scent of fresh, hot food to the malnourished stomach.

“Also, thanks,” he said chewing.

She cocked her head. “For what now?”

“For paying me in advance," Mac continued, referencing the caps she had paid him a minute ago. "Most people don’t pay until the work is done. Shows a lot of trust, you know. Because you're so impressed with my work, I take it.”

She politely took a bite, munched quietly, and swallowed, feeling warm in the belly. “That wasn’t your weekly pay. Your weekly is one-forty. That was two-hundred and ten from what we--what _I--_ scavenged.”

He started to choke. “ _What?_ Two-hundred _what_ now?”

“Ten. It’s half of our loot.” She shrugged her knapsack, which was empty and light now on her back. “I told you we would split it. You’ll get your weekly at the end of the week.”

“So you’re telling me,” he snipped with his front incisors as he chewed like a camel, leaving one noodly appendage hanging on his bottom lip. “You found enough junk in one day to make _four hundred caps?_ ”

“It’s not always like this. Sometimes you can go weeks without very much at all. Hey, your--” She pointed at her mouth.

He shook his head. ”Unbelievable. Here I am popping heads for meals, making all kinds of mortal enemies along the way, and you make money off of pencils and cans.”

“Your, um,” She kept touching the corner of her mouth. “Right there.”

“And _how_ long have you been doing this?” He continued. "Seriously, how loaded are you? Should I demand a higher wage? Like, holy crap."

“MacCready,” she said blankly, “There’s a noodle on your face.”

He looked at her with squinty, inquisitive eyes. His fingers touched his chin, found the noodle, and then raised it in the air to slurp it sloppily like the rest.

Katy raised her brow in mild distaste. “Didn’t your mother teach you table manners?”

“Nope,” he chewed with his mouth open, forking together another spindle of pasta. “Seriously, how loaded are you?”

“It’s not polite to talk about finances. And I’m not ‘loaded.’”

“Sure, sure, whatever. I won’t ask.” He lifted the dish and sipped the broth again, but failed to do so in a manner that did not leave it dripping on the corner of his mouth. “Are you going to eat that?” He gestured to her power noodles, the hunger of an ordinary young man still resting in his eager eyes.

A pig, she wanted to call him. But she couldn’t blame him. She was this close to scarfing it down too, but some social impulse about being in public compelled her to sit up straight and eat primly and properly. Rather than answer, she merely continued to eat, and he grunted.  
  
“Fine. Hey Taka...Taka-whatever. Hook me up.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week later. Mac feels things. Katy feels things too, but you knew that already.

Eight bottles on a windowsill, eighty paces away. Katy was lying on her belly in some weeds, with MacCready lying next to her right and eyeing her posture. Her right leg was flat on the ground, but bent to the firing side, knee up towards her trigger hand at a rough right angle. The non-firing leg remained straight. “Not too low on your firing hand here,” he coached, watching her hand shimmy up her rifle’s grip. The weapon was oversized for her, it looked, but she was determined to master it. “Prone position. What do you remember?”

Katy’s blew a cool breath. “The ground does most of the work,” she recited. “High grip. Both eyes open. Best in tall grass or snow. Space between the elbows."

“And?”

“And the sling should be above the bicep.” She adjusted the leather strap, which slung around her body and attached to the rifle in such a way that she could steady her left arm.

“Are you comfortable?"

“Yes.”

“All right. Show me what you got.”

Controlled breathing. Smooth trigger _press._ Smooth trigger PRESS. Like clockwork the recoil jerked back and she heard the whoosh of air from the barrel. Up ahead, a little white bottle exploded off the sill. MacCready saw her draw a deep breath and stifle her excitement. _Good,_ he thought, the corner of his mouth upturning into a cat-like grin.

She recocked it and shot. A second bottle off the shelf, then a third, then a fourth, then a— _“Relax,”_ he said sternly—a fifth, then sixth, seventh, eighth.

“Eight targets, eleven shots. Not bad for a rookie!”

Katy rolled on her back and hugged the gun in her arms. “Yeeesss!” She sung softly in an air of delight. “I’ll make it eight with eight next time, I swear.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He rolled over with her such that the sky could view their faces. There were only a few clouds today, carrying gently in cotton candy stripes, blue and white, blue and white. For only a week of lessons, Katerina was getting real good, real fast. He had to admit; she may be silly with fear and nerves, but she wasn’t incompetent. She just needed some work is all.

“It hasn’t been long, you know. We ought to go hunting,” he suggested.

“Radstags?”

“And more. Caravans love leather.”

“Mhm,” she said. She raised her arm to tweak the knob of her Pip-Boy. In came a little static and the fuzzy tune of a classic.

_The trees are the sappiest_

_The days are the nappiest_

_The dogs are the yappiest..._

Katy joined at piano volume.

“The kids are the scrappiest, the jokes the snappiest...the folks the happiest...Way back home…”

MacCready tapped his fingers on his chest to the tune. His cap tipped back, but his mind leapt forward into the candied heavens. It was warm out, not a sweltering warm but a delicate warm, like the feeling of someone’s skin. Not their hands which are usually calloused or dirty, but like the softness on a girl’s wrist, on her inner arm, the tender skin behind the knee or on her belly or on her neck. Soft, not like leather but like silk, the way it folds and moves and feels, how it just melts in your hand like liquid fabric.

“Don't know why I left the homestead,” Katy sung, with a slight rasp in velvety vibrato. “I really must confess…I'm a weary exile, singing my song of loneliness…”

“Hey,” he sat up suddenly, grabbing for his hat. “Come on. Let’s not waste time.”

Katy voice lurched back in her throat, and she scrambled to turn off the music and get to her feet.

For the first time after being in the city, she impressed MacCready in something other than her oddities; she exercised light, silent step, going completely unnoticed by the two grazing radstags. With her rifle, she fired into one’s fat thigh. Like nothing had happened the creature leapt to its hooves, as the adapted irradiated animals tended be so resilient, so in her subsequent cluelessness MacCready took his own gun and shot it through both brains. No biggie. They pulled the dead animal by the antlers together, right back to their temporary camp near a decrepit roofless cabin.

“Grasshopper, come hither,” spoke Mac in a fairly terrible English accent.

“Grasshopper is Japanese. Not British. Dojos and senseis and all that.”

“Whatever. Come here.”

She did. The dead radstag lay on its back with its limbs splayed outward, supported by some rocks propped underneath. Two dead tongues hung from their snouts at equal angles. “God,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re cutting him up.”

MacCready unsheathed his dagger which glinted in the daylight. The end curved slightly, razor sharp like a hawk’s talon. “What did you think we were going to do?”

“I mean...I just...this is like Bambi’s dad…but with two heads...”

“Bambi?”

“Old film,” she disregarded the idea and dropped to her knees beside him. “Just...get on with it.”

MacCready guided her through the basics of gutting big game. The details are best omitted, but the process proved fairly simple: he cut around and tied the bowel, and the blade sliced expertly up the belly hide. It sounded like ripping cloth. Katy listened attentively to his tips, mixed with both disgust and wonder at the sight of the bloody organs and how he pulled them free with relative ease.

“It should all come out pretty smooth,” he said nonchalantly. Most of the pink, brown, and yellow innards were placed in a metal stewpot for later. Whilst his face expressed nothing more than a mere business-as-usual frown, Katy was radioactive green. “We can cook most of this, too. I would save the blood if we had something to store it in.”

“The _blood?_ ”

“Yep,” he nodded, cracking the knuckles of his stained red fingers. “It tastes a lot better than Cram, I’ll tell you that.”

She had several milk bottles in her bag, but they seemed to slip her mind at that moment. “If you say so,” Katy said dismissively.

“Here,” he held out the knife, hilt toward her. “Your turn. I’ll take you through this part.”

She gulped. The first step was rolling the gouged animal on its side. Second was easier said than done; cutting with one hand, gently pull the skin with the other. The flesh was still warm as her hands invaded it, and the hide peeled off simply after each incision. “Just like a rubber glove,” Mac remarked, much to the bile rising in her throat.  He pushed the animal onto it’s other side and instructed her to skin that too, carefully as not to not let the meat touch the dirt, and by the end the stag’s hollow red body cavity hardly resembled anything earthling. Strange, Katy thought, to see the stag quivering and bowing its two great heads, perceiving it’s little groans at its bullet wound, and now to see it inanimate, silent, and lifeless. Another good word for it was disturbing, but nowhere near as disturbing as human corpses.

Did you know stag hearts could be carved out just as easily as bell peppers? Katy did not, and was very revolted by this notion. The meat was then harvested and prepped before an improvised fire pit, which she was far more comfortable putting together, and she sat back and watched the smoke plume to the sky. The smell was no longer pungent but instead delectable. Her stomach rumbled a bit, and after brooding over the flames for a moment, she decided all the viscera-play might be worth the meal.

MacCready and Katy were sitting against the sun below a tarp, drawn up with a meter stick into a large tented triangle. They shared from her canteen and admired their work. Mmm, the scent of cooking organs and flesh. They did not really speak, both sort of consumed in thought as they viewed the landscape, acknowledging one another’s presence only to pass the water tasting like metal on each one’s lips.

Katy allowed herself a moment of fascination, drifting in her mind on a little rowboat in the sea. Oh how she had welcomed those balmy days in Sanctuary, when the sun coaxed the fat warbling birds and squirrels from their cozy niches in the trees, and with them the gardens carried the refreshingly honeyed scent of mimosas and roses. She had the best garden, she always did. The others wives were always jealous, especially that Mrs. Whitfield and her poor wilty petunias. The tulips would always be the first to don their vibrant pink attire after bitter winter, and the lawn would grow lush with soft St. Augustine grass, and the buttercups and magnolias would feather her toes if she wore sandals that day. How it nourished the soul to merely think of it. But...

Nate. Pre-war nature invoked her pre-war life, and habitually she moved her hands to her stomach where the sickly feeling sometimes came. She wanted to listen to the tape he’d left her, the one she kept in her breast pocket, but not while MacCready was here.

Truth was she missed him, but part of her didn’t miss him at all. One one hand, he really had been her better half; all her rants and jitters and babbles and general bubbliness was moderated, her emotions counterbalanced and made easy to bear with his civilizing, tempering personality. He had been a reserved, traditional man. But after Anchorage?

Katy maintained the hope that he would get better, but Lord knows the parts of him she didn’t miss. One minute he was lovely, the next he was livid. In the tape, he had been in a kind mood. She craved the sound of it. Maybe tonight when she knew Mac was asleep, when she heard him snore. She missed a lot, and so much of her time was spent missing and missing.

The world had since been deadened, blasted through a permanent sepia filter. The color in her daydream had been scorched bald and infertile; nuclear fire had revoked the gorgeously violent hues of her memory, now intensely rusted into the overwhelmingly sandy shade of beige. Besides leafless and blackened trees, only field weeds and yellow grasses dared to grow in mangy patches over the ground. Hardly a mangled flower! She would touch the ground and knead the crumbly sand, missing the old loamy soil that touched like damp coffee grounds, the same land brought to fruition by Plymouth colonists. The scent of sweet earthiness. _God_ she missed it. Was there nothing that couldn’t be stolen from her skinny arms?

Her eyes were closed now. The air was warmer than it should be for that time of year, but forced her thoughts back to the colors. Just ahead was the park, where native redwoods and maples were burgeoning into hue. A couple of children clapped starburst palms against the sidewalk and a young man hooked arms with his dame. What might MacCready have been like if she knew him then, if he wore suspenders and cocked his hat, if he pursued classes at the university and took pretty girls dancing, if he slicked his hair neat and sat on park benches in spring and observed all the color like she always did.

Katy’s eyes flickered open to the beige again. MacCready was next to her cross-legged, calm as a petal, eyes shut wide.

* * *

“Something smells good.”

The voice was female, from somewhere far off. Katy’s eyelids parted. The ashes had built up and the fire was dying. How long was she out?

“Check it out,” said another, a man this time in a baritone pitch.

Where they came from, she didn’t know, but MacCready was off his ass first in a blur. He spilled one round, which landed successfully by the sound of a bellied “guh!”

“You killed him!” A third voice. How many were there?

“Get on the other side!” Mac commanded, suggesting she go around the cabin and attack. Katy froze and watched, her hand flinching over her 10 millimeter. Mac crouched on the corner and fired another shot, his eyes directed to a place she couldn’t see. More shots pierced the air in quick succession, like from an automatic weapon.

But she never drew her weapon. Fingers appeared on her neck, or rather she felt them there, and jerked her violently backward. “Gotcha!” A man whispered. The scream in her throat was choked quiet, and before she could properly react--a pulverizing fist crashed into her mouth, causing exploding pain in her teeth, and more fingers clawed her hair and yanked it down by the roots.

As though time had slowed, her hand flinched up to claw his hand off for a split second, and it was all she could do to tilt her head, her eyes huge and desperate, and cry out: “MacCready!”

He spun to her direction in a fraction of a second. The bewilderment splashed his face, and he rotated the barrel of his gun.

No, she blinked. Act. Act. Act. Do something.

Her fingers merely twitched in the direction of her sidearm, and--”Nah nah nah, honey,” he chided, pulling it from the holster and placing the cool metal against her temple. It seemed to be burning a little hot ring in her head, and with all her force she attempted to burst free, but the raider locked an arm around her neck. Her blood froze.

Her eyes begged to meet MacCready’s gaze, but only saw down the business end of his rifle. And it was over in a second. There was at flash, and the rifle jumped up in recoil, but she did not hear the shot. Thump. There was a wet spray on her neck. The pressure on her throat fell away when the raider struck the ground. And just like that all was still again.

All of her limbs grew so horribly heavy and dragged her to the floor. Her bones were lead, and the world sharply tottered all her metal parts against the wall with a clatter. “Oh,” she breathed, feeling something inside unwind like one of those dolls. MacCready hadn’t exhaled a hot breath when he bound forward toward her. Naturally her arm caught him around the shoulder, sort of awkwardly hitting his collarbone and clutching for the seams on his tattered trench.

“Hey now--”

Her face tucked into his scarf. MacCready remained...uncomfortable, and still, sort of pressing the small of her back as she hung limply in the center of his chest. He cleared his throat, but he didn’t dare push her off.

Around them the bodies lay bleeding and stiffening. Raiders. Six by his calculation. He didn’t take his eyes off of them, even in their incapacitated state, not until he could personally make sure they were put down.

And she was weeping. Well, not quite weeping, not quite so many tears, but she was making ragged throat sounds and sobbing from the chest.

“Are you…” He squeezed her shoulder, trailing off awkwardly as he stared at the top of her head. “Are you alright? Boss?”

Katy was sucking in breaths at an inhuman rate. Her heart, her heart, her heart. It wouldn’t stop. She was exploding, falling, unable to stand. Her whole form was plunged into unwitting fear, like she had jumped off a cliff into a bed of sharp rocks, and the ground was coming up at her faster, faster, faster.

Then she sucked in the dusty scent of his fabric, squeezing her eyes shut and balling the jacket in her fists. In the unsurety of the quiet, she had unconsciously rested her ear against his rib cage. He was breathing, slow and cool. In, out. In, out. An unspecified, uncountable amount of time passed, before a calm washed over her and she was able to pull away.

Katy said nothing. Immediately she turned and walked a couple of paces from his radius, reddening underneath her already sun-glow cheeks. She was overcome with the urge to run, to hide, to bury herself in a hole and never come out. How utterly useless and embarrassing she was to her own self.

She touched her neck, which was cold and slick. Blood of course. It had stained her entire shoulder.

“Boss,” MacCready tried again, hesitantly stepping in her direction. He watched from behind as she reached into her breast pocket and retrieved a zippo and a Salem. “Hey, Katerina,” he attempted again. Her name sounded weird in his mouth, as if he knew her. “I asked you something. Are you...”

“I’m fine,” she said with gritted teeth, chomping on her cig and trying to light it with shaky fingers. “I’m fine.”

He paused, and his quiet only made her want to die more. What was he thinking of her?

“All right,” he said finally. “All right.”

He reached into his satchel and pulled a long, strange object. It was sharp and black, like an iron sword of some sort. Katy peeked over her shoulder to see him attach the bayonet to his rifle.

“What’s that?”

MacCready didn’t answer. He approached the first corpse, the one that had seized her. He jutted his arms outward, aimed the bayonet between the raider’s metal pauldrons, and thrusted downward. Like a toothpick in icing. It sunk in cleanly, the corpse twitched, and he liberated it with the same fluid jerk upward.

Katy felt the bile in her esophagus. She watched him go around and do it again and again, hearing the same squelching sound of stabbed flesh and escaping air each time. By the time he returned, he looked even more like hell. Blood had spurted onto his boots and legs.

She turned, the tears still fresh in her glassy green eyes, just as she exhaled a lungful of smoke. Her expression was some mix of desperate, horrified, and bound to break again. Her jaw was open, her lips parted into an o, her cheeks flushed. Her round eyes were pulsing it felt, communicating her fear in every intensity short of vocally screaming from her head. And when she looked at him, he was something else; his eyes were a stark witchy blue, his untrimmed brow creased with anguish and anger. At the same time there was a calm, determined look about MacCready. A look she  _had_ seen before, undoubtedly, in her very own father. A look that said simply, “it had to be done.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Raiders,” he said. “They’re quick and violent. They must have seen the smoke. I...I should have known we were too out in the open. I’m sorry they came up on us like that. I should have known.”

“No,” she shook her head. “No, no, don’t blame yourself. Just…” She took a drag and exhaled. “Just let it be. I’m the one who should have known.”

She wanted to slam her head against a brick wall and let her brains gush out. She was incapable. She was useless. Would she ever be able to defend herself? Would she ever be able to defend Shaun? Or would she just lose him again?

The mere thought of her infant child was evoking all kinds of visceral feelings. The pain in her stomach was pinching, clenching, stabbing. She felt another rush of tears, another host of sobs. Oh Shaun.

“Come on,” she said suddenly, flicking the butt to the ground and grinding it in with her toe. “Come on and help me.”

“With what?”

She approached one of the bodies, even though her stomach was contorting and twisting with sickly thoughts. It was the female attacker. Katy bent and grabbed her slender limp hands and started pulling.

“What are you doing, Boss?”

She tried to heave her, but the corpse was strapped with armor that easily weighed an extra fifteen pounds. “Over there,” she gestured with a nod to natural depression in the ground, a few meters away.

“Moving them?” He asked confused. “Why?"

"It isn't right to leave them like this," she explained.

"Boss, they just attacked us. They’re _raiders,_ for Chrissake. Why do you even bother?”

Katerina pursed her lips into a tight thin line and grimaced. “Because they’re still people,” she said. “I don’t want to bury them. But they shouldn’t be like this. Nobody should be like this. Out in the open, shot down like a dog.”  
  
She heaved again, making about a foot’s progress. Mac was speechless for a moment.

“Boss, but they _were_ dogs.”

She produced a sigh, long and short on patience. It was taking all her effort to remain composed in that moment.

"Mac," she huffed. "Are you going to help or not?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katy and Mac contemplate one another, briefly. Short chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience. School, work, and general life has limited my free time. When I do have a minute, I am always at my keyboard typing away at this story, even if it's only a paragraph at a time. I really love them both as I'm sure you've noticed. The chapters may come slowly, but they WILL come.
> 
> Thanks again for all your comments and kudos. The tiniest bit of feedback makes my entire week, every time.

Night was coming fast, weariness was washing over their joints, and their boots now hit the asphalt road in a matched rhythm. From the droop of their necks, it was obvious they were exhausted. It had been roughly seven hours, seven hours of long, trudging foot travel, all under the bitter Commonwealth sun. Yet, neither of them had spoken much of a word. No sideline conversation, and no small talk on the weather.

Katy was the one to blame. She drew a big sigh as she walked, finding her gaze wandering to her hired mercenary from the corner of her eye. He looked as weary as she felt; staring at the ground, his posture seemed to slouch and his feet dragged gravel and dust into a little cloud. MacCready had made some rough attempts at conversation in the beginning, but she had met them all with silence and blank, poker face expressions until he dropped it completely. There was something about nearly being killed that shut you up for awhile.

She wondered: he wasn’t reliving it, was he? Were the shots still ringing in his ears? Was the fear pumping through his body at the drop of a pin? Habitually she would feel tingling where she had been grabbed, where the barrel had been placed against her temple. Did he have those feelings too? Or was it all a regular day for somebody as hardened as himself?

It seemed that way, didn’t it? She tried to remember.  He hadn’t been paralyzed with fear. He had reacted like a clockwork machine, killing all the raiders in quick succession. The entire event rolled smoothly off of his back, and something about it didn’t sit terribly right with her. Yes, she was grateful to have survived that quick but violent altercation. And yes, MacCready had done exactly what she had hired him for. But afterwards, he was so _okay_. He was fine, normal, the same as before. 

In her experience, you don’t forget what it is to kill.

_Shots piercing the air like the tearing of a silk dress. The blonde’s instincts were thrashing in her bones and brain, screaming to flee, but there was nowhere to go. “D-don’t...don’t shoot me!” Her voice shook, leveling the ten millimeter against the person before her. All her power was concentrated in the weapon she held. “Stop! Stop it or I’ll shoot!”_

_They didn’t stop. They moved, or jerked really, reaching for something. It was a chance she couldn’t take. Katy closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger once and then once more. Two shots. When she opened her eyes, the girl’s body went limp and fell back, and thick red gobs of blood began to pour from her wounds._

_The lights of her eyes flickered around wildly, and her thin bony fingers grasped the air in tiny circles, touching nothing but air in her moment of death. More dark blood spilled from her mouth as she coughed up something unintelligible and tried to breathe a horrible, ragged breath. A twitch more and at last she was still._

_Katy’s mouth fell open in a ghostly expression of shock. Adrenaline stiffened all her bones to clutch her gun like ice. The raider, a girl no older than sixteen or seventeen, was dead by her hand. Was this was war made of us?_

Presently, she watched MacCready’s bowed head, the way he moved slowly and wearily, wondering what exactly he was capable of. What was his moral barrier?

As if he had tuned in on her brain waves, he turned suddenly and met her eyes.

“Uh,” she said, slightly startled. “Are you...uh, holding up?”

Mac turned away, wiping the sweat from his brow and sighing. On his back was a rucksack, much like Katy’s, but the straps were loosened so it swung with each step. “Maybe if I wasn’t holding all this crap,” he retorted annoyedly.

“I think you’ll live,’” Katy said. She pointed at the sky; it was saturating a deep blue, the clouds were-white gold, and the objects on the horizon were becoming black silhouettes. “There’s the water tower. Means we’re not even a mile out.”

“Great. At least my spine is in magnificent pain,” Mac complained.

 _You big whiner,_ she thought. She was tired too, from the bones in her feet to the pulse in her head, but at least she wasn’t so annoying. And just like that, the conversation died again, and they resumed their quiet travel.

The path they followed was previously known as Lexington Road, a small byway that passed both its namesake city and Concord on its way north. Before gas prices got too high, it was the street Katy took to town for clothes shopping. She could still remember whizzing down this road in Nate’s cherry red Corvega, or even her Columbia bicycle, feeling the wind in her hair as she dipped up and down the hilly Massachusetts green. Breezy and free.

Now all the cars were left to deteriorate as rusty artifacts, and the road itself was broken into chunks and massive potholes. Though some fledgling plant life had sprung in the form of weeds and bushes, the host of trees and general flourishing was zapped away. Dead like anywhere else. Dead like those raiders, their lifeless forms toppled on each other in a pile.

Mac cleared his throat. “So,” he began. Katy turned. “You never really told me about this Sanctuary place.”

Katy paused for a few seconds, rubbing her tongue on her teeth as she wondered how to describe it. Her old home? Her new home? How much was safe to divulge? After a minute, MacCready sighed dramatically, likely believing he was being ignored again.

“It’s not much,” she said at once. “It’s a...pre-war neighborhood. You’ll see. We’ll rest and wash up like I told you.”

 _And then we will rescue the Detective,_ she thought. She’d tell him about her plans in due time, when there was a level of trust established.

Trust. What was that anymore?

“Long as I can get a drink, a smoke, and tighten a few screws on this thing,” MacCready shrugged the sling of his rifle, “then it’s Diamond City to me.”

“Yeah” she trailed off, kicking a loose rock across the path. Faintly up ahead, the Red Rocket sign came into view, though it was difficult to see in the approaching dark. “There,” she pointed. “There’s the gas station. We’ll drop most of our things there.”

The prospect of a meal and rest must have been exciting, because she gripped her bag straps and quickened her pace considerably. As the Vaultie jogged ahead, he maintained his slow, enervated gait. MacCready watched her back as she bounced, that impossibly huge gun bouncing with her. Good grief, that woman might drive him mad.

It must have been terribly heavy to carry all this way. He told her before and he kept telling her: that was a man’s weapon, and she had no business using it. Not in a sexist way or anything, but from a purely logistical perspective. She was a hundred pounds sopping wet, and it was impractically Goddamn huge. Weapons like that weren’t meant for petite blonde china dolls.

Mac pursed his chapped lips in thought. Mouse. Whenever he chalked up his thoughts on her, that was the word. She scurried in pitter-patter steps, hiding herself in corners, holes, and crevices. She mumbled and squeaked, she cowered at unexpected noises. She even twitched her little pink nose when she thought real hard. If this was a dog-eat-dog world, then that’s what she was. A mouse, quivering and shaking in the jaws of a predator.

Or you know what else? Jelly. She was jelly. Nervous, excitable, spilly and wobbly. Quite fine with a lid on, but outside her glass she shook and spilled and cut her own head off on the edge of the jar. She had no rigidity, no backbone, no urge to raise that big fucking gun and use it. No Goddamn wonder she hired him. How in hell she fought through Boston to get to Goodneighbor was the mystery of the century. And you know, that wasn’t even it. That wasn’t even so bad. There were lots of nervous, shaky-handed settlers in the Wastes that didn’t know a super mutant if it were to kiss them on the mouth. But the Boss? Her big flaw?

She was too _good._ Contrary to popular belief, having a big, softie moral heart was Goddamn dangerous. The incident with the raiders captured it perfectly. God! Only thinking about it made him clench his fists. He was still pissed about it. She couldn’t shoot, he got that part, but literally fucking _nobody_ else on the goddamn planet gave a shit about burials. You know what you do with scumbags like them? Leave them to _rot._ Raiders weren’t worth a shitty handful of “respects.” Not a funeral, no pussy apologies about how anarchy is bad or how they deserved better, not even a hasty corpse pile and flowers (which was all she could scrape together, except with fucking _weeds_ of grass, believe it or fucking not). Did she know what they had planned for her? Mac knew. It was fucking far from peachy. How detached did you have to be from the world in order to have _that_ high-maintenance of a belief system? If he wasn’t scrounging for caps, then he’d be fucking out of this.

It didn’t help that she was locked up tighter than an Amish chastity belt. He asked questions, and she would look at him like a dead fish and half-ass her answers. What’s the plan for today Boss? Oh, just pilfering a Goddamn pile of sand for fuck-all. No reason, really. Where are we going Boss? Oh, just the most obscure, non-descript location in the entire Goddamn world, because I’m fucking nutso. In Goodneighbor, she came off as a woman with a job to do. She sounded like she had actual fucking priorities. Again, if it weren’t for the caps...

The thing was, despite the whole fucking mess, this job was too convenient. Even the teaching part wasn’t so bad. It was fairly easy, paid well, and stayed low-profile. The last one was especially important; all the travel and scavving that bored him to death, but it permitted him the time and space to breathe safely out of the Gunners’ eyes. Not that his luck would last forever, mind you. He knew they’d find him eventually. Barnes, Winlock, and their whole fucking posse. What he’d do about it, Mac was absolutely fucking clueless, but at least for now it could be stalled.

Of course, it went deeper than that. There was the throbbing, which only ever came from his heart, and it never left him. Something he could hardly speak aloud without choking up like a big fucking baby. He’d been meaning to write a letter home for awhile now. _Just hold on, Duncan. Daddy’s coming._ Someday he’d prove he could be a father. Not now, not now. He forced his mind away from that line of thought and onto other things.

God _damn,_ he was tired. His legs were melting iron, and he needed a cigarette, but he had the nagging feeling that he was out. A quick pat of his empty pocket proved it true. Fuck. Maybe he could bum a few off her when they finally sat down. He’d seen her smoke enough times to know she always had a few on her.

As they approached the gas station, The Boss suddenly burst into a sprint, interrupting his little thinking escapade. “Hey—” he tensed, his jaw and joints freezing in place.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, MacCready ventures deeper into the Katy's realm.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't know what cigarette withdrawal is like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I keep changing Katy's last name. This is the last time.

The Red Rocket station was like any other, though it seemed the rubble and detritus had been swept away. Under the dim light of strung lanterns, he saw the walls had been fortified with boards and cinderblocks. Katy darted in between the gas pumps just as the side door petered open, and much to his surprise, a dog emerged. When the creature did not immediately maul her to death, he figured as much it was hers and relaxed.

“Dogmeat!” Katy squealed, dropping to her knees. “How are you boy? Miss me boy?”

The critter looked virtually untouched by radiation, a full-blooded German Shepherd from his coloring. He giddily approached her, barked once, and began raining kisses into her hands and face.

“Marcy didn’t give you a hard time, did she? Are you eating well?”

Dogmeat barked again, then directed his nose to her collar, where the large dark stain of blood spatter had dried. His ears flattened against his head as he whined.

“Don’t worry,” she comforted him. “It’s not mine, boy.”

MacCready had let his bag fall, suspending it from his elbow. The animated way in which she spoke to an animal was so childlike and light-hearted. He wanted to laugh at her unbridled sense of playfulness, except he was in a goddamn pissy mood, so he didn’t. He just wanted his meal and a place to crash his tired ass before she pulled some dumb shit again.

Katy sprung up and pointed at him. “This is MacCready. He’s a friend. Go on, go meet him.”

“Didn’t know you had a dog.”

She shrugged, watching MacCready become progressively more uncomfortable as Dogmeat prodded his nose in his feet and legs. “Kinda,” she said. “Not sure whose he is. He goes where he likes. But we sure do get along, don’t we? Don’t we boy?”

Mac bent to scratch his head. He was a decently handsome fella, what with the lack of oozing wounds and rabies. “I guess he is pretty cute,” he said. ”Who’s a good boy?” But just as he touched him, Dogmeat growled lowly growl, shaking his head away and departing back to Katy. Mac sighed. Never was great with animals. Fine then. “So, this it? Sanctuary?” He asked.

“Oh, this isn’t Sanctuary, silly. That,” she gestured to the small glow in the near distance. “Is Sanctuary. Come on into the garage though. Bring that stuff.”

He did.

“ _Sh—_ I mean, _shoot,_ Boss, is that _power armor?_ ”

“Yeah,” Katy nonchalantly waved as she unloaded goods into shelves and crates,, while Dogmeat sat loyally at her side. The place had been converted into a small workshop of sorts; tools hung on the wall, some welder’s equipment sat at his feet, spools of wire and chunks of engine scattered around. What looked like a broken down motorbike leaned on a kickstand in the corner, though it seemed she hadn’t pried her tools to it yet.

But the greatest marvel of the room was the mechanical monster; a towering frame of T-60 power armor, about eight feet tall. It was slightly red in hue from oxidation, and not all the pieces appeared intact. Actually there was no plating on the legs of the frame at all. But it was tremendous to behold the presence of such an advanced piece of machinery.

“Sturges, our uh, mechanics guy. He’s been teaching me a thing or two about it. You don’t know anything about using power armor, right?”

Mac’s picked his jaw off of the ground, shaking his head vigorously. “Never. I’ve only ever dreamed,” he said, touching the forearm’s alloy shield. Back in the Capital Wasteland, the closest you would ever get to this is if the Brotherhood was peacefully tyrannizing your town. A couple of high-ranking Gunners had this kind of stuff too, maybe a lucky raider here or there, but it was still pretty frickin’ rare. Studying it closely, his eyes were lit with curiosity. “Holy sh...” he paused midword, muting his own profanity again. “ _Why_ do you have this?”

“I salvaged it. Like most things.” She gestured to the other parts of her personal workshop, where radios, phones, and typewriters had been split open and gutted of their circuitry. “What, you still think I’m crazy?”

“I _know_ you’re crazy. If you don’t use it, why don’t you scrap it for parts? I’m sure this would fetch a heckuva price.”

“Maybe I’ll need it. Who knows. Besides, it’s not in great shape now anyway. Right _here,_ ” she pointed at the knees, the left of which had a metal cap pried open to expose the inner mechanisms. “Is a big problem. The knees can lock up so you can nap while standing, but I haven’t figured out how to release them. Right now it can only waddle. Actually not even that, really, because it doesn’t even have a juiced fusion core.”

“Damn. Call me jealous, Boss.”

“Don’t be. It’s really more Sturges’ pet than mine. I don’t know anything about servos or sprockets or whatever it is.” After a short pause, she probably noticed the squinty, skeptical look on his face. Her hand propped on her hip. “What? What is it? I don’t have something in my teeth, do I?”

MacCready shook his head. “No, I just… it’s...well...you need professional training to use this, right? Why would _you—_ ” he snorted, picturing her trying to climb inside the giant hatch, “— _possibly_ need it? They don’t make these bite-sized.”

She turned finally to give him a look. Piercing, almost angry. “What, you think I can’t use this?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

“Hmph,” she hmphed. Katy probably thought he was a jerk, and she was kind of right. MacCready never promised to whisper sweet little lies to boost her ego, now did he? He turned his attention back to the mechanical monster and adored it with more boyish wonder. He always figured she was a little crazy, with all of her funny, mousy mannerisms. He expected maybe a bunch of cats or an hoarding issue or something in her garage. Not a professional, pre-war state-of-the-art military vehicle. Goddamn she was full of surprises.

“All right,” she said finally, having unloaded all the necessary items. “Now to Sanctuary. Just a short walk over, c’mon..”

“OK, OK…” He tore his eyes from the armor. “Hey, Boss, you don’t got a smoke, right?”

She pursed her lips into a frown. “What, you can’t afford any on your own income?”

“I just happened to run out. Come on, Boss. Just a puff?”

“Fine. Salems or Greys?”

“Greys.”

She dug into her breast pocket and pulled a single stick, bent and slightly crumpled from it’s position against her body. Mac didn’t have a lighter on him that second. Katy huffed, rolling her eyes, and retrieved her own. Chinking, and then the burst of flame. He cherried up the ember with giddiness.

Familiar with the burnt popcorn taste, he pressed his tongue against his teeth (meant to stall the oncoming cough) and felt the itch leave him from the first breath.  Pressure on his brain, which he didn’t know was previously there, lifted. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

He enjoyed the rest of the numbing taste as they moved on. Dogmeat took it upon himself to lead the trio on the road to a small foot bridge. From the right appeared an imposing statue, tall and black against the dusk sky, of a colonial with his long musket. Then coming over the creek, Katy flipped on her Pip-boy flashlight and waved her arms. Ahead he could make out a tall rickety wooden structure, something resembling the cheap scaffolding they used to cobble together in Lamplight. A light stationed at the top swiveled in his direction and blinded them.

“Password?” A deep voice barked. Mac raised his hand to shield his eyes.

“ _Wom-pa-nog!”_ Katy shouted.

“Guns down!” The voices yelled back. “Just Katy and company. Guns down, men.”

The light finally shut off, and Mac struggled to adjust his sight as she quickly ushered him forward.

“Wompa-what now, Boss?”

 _“Wampanoag,_ ” she repeated quietly. “It’s the name of a native American tribe.”

“Native American…” He murmured to himself, doubly confused by her answer. But Katy proceeded forward with unabashed confidence. One of the guardpersons descended to greet them with his massive laser weapon in his hand, evident by the dancing red charge in its chamber. The charge vaguely illuminated his stoic frown, and it seemed he held himself straight and upright in long coat, leather boots, and cowboy hat. It reminded Mac of a ranger of the Old West. MacCready instinctively stiffened his posture.

Quickly, the straight-edge, soldierly poise melted away, and his face broke into a buttery smile. “It’s good to see you alive,” he said to Katy, tipping his hat. “You haven’t found...”

“No,” she smiled wearily, though the smile was not at all mirrored in her eyes. “No. Still working on it.”

Vague as shit. Typical for her. She was always leading him blindfolded.

“I see. Well, we’ve made some progress since you’ve been gone. Found a few folks who needed a place to stay, but I think they plan to settle here permanently. Jun built wire planters for the tatoes, the corn is just sprouting, and Marcy made room for some leafy greens. I think we can start trying to irrigate…” He continued to babble things about crops and resources. Katy seemed tired and only half listening, nodding without response. “Might have struck a deal with the Abernathys...oh, and Sturges wired up an old terminal, but it only programs in Japanese. Mama Murphy’s been clean for thirty hours as of now...”  
  
“Thanks Preston,” she said. Did Mac perhaps detect a touch of impatience?

“Just my job. Hold up though, what’s _that?”_

Katy followed his gaze to the spatter on her collar. “Don’t worry, it isn’t mine,” she assured. “We ran into trouble is all, but Mac here took care of it. It’s okay, really. Preston, this is Robert MacCready. MacCready, this is Preston Garvey of the Minutemen.”

There were suddenly knots in his stomach. The Minutemen? As in, “At a minute’s notice” Minutemen? How in hell were they still kicking?

“Hey,” Mac greeted, locking eyes with the man. Preston’s expression seemed to be squinty and suspicious, but it was hard to discriminate in the quickly consuming dark.

“Nice to meet you, MacCready,” Preston tipped, surveying the newcomer up and down. “Where from?”

“Uh, you too. From the Capital Wasteland, originally.”  
  
“Where’s that?”  
  
“Washington D.C.”

Katy raised her eyebrow, just as the cowboy pursed his lips into a thin line. “You’re a mercenary?” Preston asked.

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

Preston readjusted his massive laser weapon against his body, almost as if to draw attention to it. “All right,” he said, his shifty-eyed expression still frozen on his face. Then he beckoned to Mac’s sniper rifle. “I hope you put that to good use. We don’t want nor tolerate trouble here. You understand?”

“Preston...” Katy scolded, in the tone mothers use for their children.

“Course I do,” Mac nodded. He was pretty used to everybody not trusting him. “I appreciate the welcome, Garvey.”

The men maintained their flat stare for a fat three seconds, but even that was too long. Something wasn’t right, and Mac got the sense Preston didn’t like him very much.

Not that the cowboy was stupid for placing his suspicions on MacCready…

Truly, he had no problem with the Minutemen. Maybe a bit too altruistic for his terms, but even Mac could see they were a force for good in the world. Essentially, they were self-organized militias of farmers, dedicated to “freeing” the wasteland or some other democratic crap. Colonel Hollis, one of their high-ranking members, had been a huge deal not less than a year ago. Publick Occurrences had a whole article about him, about his valiance, his determination, his leadership. There was talk of law and order in the Commonwealth again. Unicorns and fuckin’ rainbows as far as he knew, but who is to blame them for trying?

Problem was, there _may or may not_ be a very specific paramilitary organization, one with which MacCready _may or may not_ have held membership, and it _may or may not_ be that said organization took a Minutemen stronghold by force, slaughtered their ranks, and was key in dismantling the entire faction. “The Quincy Massacre,” published the Publick. Mac hadn’t actually been there, but he had been rolling with them for months beforehand. He’d heard the stories. Hollis had called for help, but not one other man showed besides his own squadron. The Gunners were slaughtering left and right. Even abandoned, the Colonel held absolute trust in the Minutemen, right up to the moment his own men shot him dead.

MacCready was quite the asshole, but that kind of karma was bad fucking news. He’d left without notice soon afterwards. However, part of him guessed that this Preston guy didn’t care about his excuses.

“I’ll...show you where you’ll sleep,” the Mouse intervened, tugging at his tattered sleeve. Mac gratefully tore his sight from Preston and followed eagerly after her, pulling the rim of his cap over his eyes as Dogmeat followed.

Sanctuary really was not much to marvel at. Just a loop of pre-war houses, all identical, one-story, and painfully suburban. Many of the homes had been damaged to some degree or another, ranging from rust to complete ruination, but there were rough attempts to board up the windows or establish scaffolding on the rooftops. Reminded him of their shoddy attempts of making Bigtown livable. Y’know, in between the slaver raids and super mutant attacks. And he could see, even in the dark, Sanctuary had piss-poor defenses. Not much had been done to secure perimeter, left completely open from the back, and all the dozens of strung lanterns and ugly-ass wooden eyesores might as well have been a radio beacon broadcasting “Pillage Us!” to every raiding scumbag in the state. Now that reminded him a _lot_ of Bigtown, in a very uneasy way.

Advancing in, it seemed they’d just missed some kind of communal dinner. In front of a yellow house, a few picnic tables had been set up mess hall style, and a big stewpot was left empty by a dying ashpit. From this, a couple of soft-looking stragglers were dispersing into their homes. Some of them took peculiar notice of MacCready. He just kept his head down and chewed on his cigarette.

“And here I am,” Katy gestured to one of the many identical boxy houses, covered in bright blue enamel tiles and hastily repaired with boards and blocks. She produced a key and unlocked the front door (useless considering the giant fucking holes in the wall) which creaked as it swung open into the makings of a family home. Effort had went into making the small space livable and cozy; rugs and blankets, flower pots on sills and end tables, shelves of dusty books and half-melted candles. Katy disappeared down the hall in what was presumably a bedroom, and emerged with a stack of quilts in hand.

“You’ll be sleeping on the couch,” she said, setting them down. She moved to light the oil lamp on the end table. “Wish I could offer you a mattress, but not even the Longs have more than sleeping bags. The facilities are out back if you need them.”

“That’s, ah, that’s all right,” he responded, glancing over at the lumpy red sofa. Looked a hell of a lot more comfortable than most places he’s crashed, that’s for sure. Once you’ve slept on cave rock, everything else is a feather pillow. And the second he sat down, he felt as though he was melting. His whole achey body had finally found some rest, particularly his sore feet. Mac removed his cap and ran his fingers through his dust-brown hair. His only discomfort now was the gnawing in his belly.

Katy had already began to build a small cooking fire in the woodstove. She disappeared into the hall a few times, returning with various items like an armful of split logs or a fluffed pillow for his head. Around the fourth time she had exchanged her dirty Vault suit and Pipboy for a ruffly cotton nightgown with long lace sleeves. Mac followed suit and tossed his own outer garments and boots on the floor.

There was something awfully soothing about it all, about the crackle of woodfire and the coziness of the little house. He lowered his heavy head for a moment,  his eyes weighing tons, and he felt himself drifting, drifting, his consciousness ebbing away...

“Not asleep, are you?” She asked, startling him at some point later.

MacCready flashed his eyes open. “No,” he blinked hard, lifting his head at once. There was a smell to the room now. Something cooking.

“Oh, sorry. At least take some of this,” she held in both of her little hands a plastic bowl of dark soup, with unidentified chunks afloat in the broth. Not a five star filet mignon, but it’ll do. He immediately accepted and tipped it into his throat. Very salty, with a strong onion flavor, but he welcomed the warmth into his belly. The meaty chunks were hard to chew. Meanwhile, on the chair across from him, she was eating the stew politely with her spoon, and Dogmeat had curled up at her white toes. The flickering ligh of the fire, along with the long drafty dress, seemed to make her ghostly.

“So…” he said, after lapping the final drips from the shallow of the dish. “Garvey. He’s some kind of mayor?”

“Mm,” Katy swallowed. “No. He doesn’t call himself that, but Preston holds himself responsible for everyone’s safety. Never sleeps. Can’t say we are big enough to warrant a mayor, though.”

Mac squinted. “Oh. Then how many of you are there?”

“Five when I left, but you heard him. We’ve got a couple more folks taking residence here.” She shrugged. “Marcy doesn’t like it, but Preston accepts everyone who comes through here, offering beds in exchange for work. She said it’s too dangerous, but I don’t know.”

“I’d agree with that. You never know you you’re letting in here.”

“Maybe. Preston’s got a big heart. He just wants to help as many people as he can.

“Well,” he huffed. “Big hearts don’t much keep you alive. Maybe you should focus on taking care of your own first.”

Katy set her bowl down, and the clink alarmed Dogmeat to raise his tired head. “Perhaps,” she said, rising gently to her feet. She bent to fix the fireguard on the woodstove, so that it would not spit embers out on the rug. “But, perhaps taking care of others has some value.”

Mac let her words sit in the air. Some value? No, it was some crap. But he was too tired to contest her now.

“I...think I’ll be heading to bed. Goodnight, MacCready. If you need water, there are cans in the fridge.

“All right, I guess. Thanks Boss.”

As expected, Dogmeat pulled himself up to follow her. “It’s no problem,” she smiled wearily.

With that, she swept away, the air catching the fabric as though she were a gliding spirit. Mac just lay his tired head down, nestling himself a pocket of warmth underneath the quilts. He stared for a minute at the fiery glow before him. The flames were small, licking and dancing, crackling like popcorn. Warmth. There was something to it all that made him feel, but he couldn’t place his finger on what it was he felt. Though his stomach was full, there was still a hollowness somewhere in his gut. Emptiness, maybe. Could it be sadness? Longing?

As his eyelids drooped shut, and he saw the flickering through his closed eyelids, a different image appeared. A toddler child with blue gem eyes. The child was laying down, breathing in fast shallow gulps, squeezing his eyes shut in pain. He couldn’t help him. Hot rags to his forehead, freshwater, wrapping him as tightly as he could. Nothing was working. _“Daddy…”_ He cried, the sound of which ignited all of MacCready’s nerves in a primal, instinctual way.

It wrenched his gut just to think about it. MacCready felt his lip tremble, but he sucked it all back. _Don’t think about it, Mac. Don’t you fucking dare._ And before he could think, before the tears could come, the Sandman came and put him into sweet, sweet slumber.

* * *

 

Old habits, he knew, died fucking hard. When MacCready next stirred awake, he was overcome with the hunger for another smoke.

He sat up immediately, noticing at once it was still the dead of night. Only hot ashes remained in the stove, and the cricket chirps from outside were incessantly loud. In a little yellow ashtray beside him, there was cigarette he had smoked to the filter. He checked, just to be sure there wasn’t a puff left—yes, he really did get that desperate. But he had sucked it dry.

He got himself up and drowsily stretched. Where to get a smoke?

First thing’s first. Mac quietly stepped outside, grass feathering his toes, and closed the door as softly as he could. The air was refreshingly cool now, and the millions of stars freckled the sky like someone’s cheeks. The “facilities” Katy mentioned had to be one of the black blobs in the dark, but he was halfway there before giving up. Rather, he took a quick piss in a hedge and returned inside.

Dogmeat had manifested in his brief absence, hunkered down and ready to pounce. Mac clenched at the gut. “Hey—” he whispered, raising his arms in surrender. Dogmeat gave a low, gruff bark, seemingly content with this response, and turned to mosey back into Katy’s bedroom. Phew, he thought in relief. Last thing he needed was a puncture wound in the ass.

First he checked the kitchen drawers. Only silverware, measuring tape, oven mitts and other crap. The cupboards, just dishes and medicine. Maybe he’d visit that bottle of painkillers later, but perhaps the Boss had cigarettes somewhere else.

Silent as a cat he entered the hall, straining to see in the dark. The first room on the left contained a tub, shower, sink, and toilet. Briefly he caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked as he felt; frazzled and itchy, from the tousle of his hair to the way his thin, over-stretched tank top clung him. Mac felt his cheeks. A little scruffy too, but he could fix that later. The next door opened into a laundry room, with shelves and shelves of nothing he needed.

He didn’t know which of the final two doors were Katy’s. Praying, he chose at random and turned the knob slowly, waiting for the click, and peeked before entering. Seeing nothing but dark, he carefully crept it wider and wider until he could make out the shapes.

At first, he didn’t know what he was seeing. He squinted hard, perceiving only the square window on the far wall, from which one could see the many of freckly stars. His eyes adjusted soon after. There was some translucent drapes gently wavering in the breeze. Below that, a reading chair, and a blue lamp. And...a crib?

He moved forward to confirm he was not hallucinating. Yes, it was, an infant crib, with a broken mobile attached. His feet touched something soft. A fluffy rug, covered in little rocket ship patterns. The room was swept clean and organized nicely; there was what looked like a changing table, a tricycle, and a couple of toys laying on their sides shooting him blank stares. He picked up a toy alien from the floor, studying it with a puzzled expression. The mood of the night was suddenly very eery.

Oddly, the chirping outside ceased, and the feeling came about him that he shouldn’t be here. Mac placed the alien where he found it and turned quickly to leave. In his rush, he stepped right into the tricycle, accidentally kicking it across the floor with a horribly loud set of clangs. The rattle was practically a burglar alarm. MacCready froze, his blood running still.

At once his ears picked up movement from the other room, Katy’s room. She materialized instantaneously in the door frame with a messy bedhead, a baseball bat, and an expression of pure shock.

“ _What_ are you doing in here?” Her voice was hoarse from sleep.

Mac opened his mouth to speak, but could hardly form a word.

“MacCready,” she demanded, clearly panicked and angry. The look in her eyes was ferocious; he had never heard nor seen her so livid. “What the _hell_ are you doing in here? This is _off-limits._ I never said you could rummage through my house.”

“I…” was all he could manage from the throat. “I’m sorry…” he managed to spill. The dog was growling at him too.

“Sorry? Get the hell out. Get the _hell out,_ MacCready.” She was shouting now, in such a fervent rage he never figured possible. It was all he could manage to stand there and witness the ball of fury before him.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Do I have to say it again? Get the hell _OUT!_ ” Katy cried aloud, probably waking up the entire neighborhood in the process.

Finally he listened, zipping straight past her and out of the front door.

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. He pounded the bone of his palm into his forehead. Mac, what the fuck were you doing? More than that, what the fuck was _she_ doing? The fuck was that room about? He lingered there on the steps for a minute, wondering if he should go back in, or if she’d just kick him out. The breeze hit his exposed skin. Looking down, he realized he was barefoot with no coat.  Fuckin’ A, he thought again.

Worst part was, he never got his fucking cigarette.

* * *

Mac took a walk around the block. When he got back, Katy was no longer flipping her shit. She was calm, if a bit pink in the face, and asking him to come back inside. She apologized for yelling, but that was it. No explanation. No attempt to justify her banshee-bitch behavior. Before returning to bed, she reminded him of the water in the fridge, then just like that Mac was alone with his thoughts again, confused and befuddled as he watched her disappear.

What was her issue? He wanted to think about it, but he couldn't fucking concentrate. He wanted a cigarette bad.

Through the remaining hours of the night, he couldn’t quite sleep at all. The craving for nicotine inflamed into a pulsing headache that rattled his brain like a bag of stones. It was hard to think about anything at all! He must have gotten up seven or eight times just to pace, curse quietly, and rub his temples until he was dizzy. At roughly two in the morning, he searched the kitchen and found a jar of dried mutfruit and a container of flat, disc-like bread pieces, which he ate up ravenously. At three, he downed four of the eleven canisters of water in the fridge, desperate for some kind of relief. It did nothing. And a bit later, he remembered the painkillers in the back of the medicine cabinet.

At maybe five in the morning, his withdrawal headache began to throb again. He awoke grumbling. His very blood was begging for that lovely, eight-a-day puff. He knew smoking was bad for you, and he knew it drained his savings. Lucy had always been quick to chastise him for the ugly habit. _“Rob,”_ she’d say, in that concerned way. _“If I smell that on your breath again, you’re sleeping on the couch. Don’t expose Duncan to that disgusting habit too!”_

She existed in perpetual worry, that woman. He tried, he really did, but he had to resort to smoking while out on jobs. When he realized she could smell it on his shirt, he started packing a change of clothes. That last year with her, before Duncan got sick, he was always out. Always on foot, crouching on some rooftop or in some shadow, focusing someone’s head between his crosshairs. And always each time, before, during, and after, he was chewing on cigarettes. Like was said: old habits die fuckin’ hard.

His first instinct was to reach for the painkiller bottle. Then he became strangely aware of the quiet hum emanating from the bathroom. It took a second to identify the noise. It was...melodic.

_“Wish on the moon...and look...for the gold in the rainbow…”_

Diamond City Radio. A mix of voices. Katy and Bob Crosby, the blend of soprano and baritone, singing together in a way quite pleasing to the ear. He pulled himself onto his feet, feeling much like a puppet with old strings, and strung his tired legs into the hall. The splash of water. More soft music. So she was bathing.

Headache blaring, MacCready found himself in the bedroom. A chronic smoker like herself had to have a stash somewhere, right?

Dogmeat was thankfully missing, probably having been let out earlier. The room was plain and grandmotherly; a row of terracotta plant pots on the sill, lacy flowery bedsheets and curtains, and a washed-out painting of a lilypond above the bed. He surveyed it with his desperate, addictive eye; nothing on the dresser or shelves. As the music carried on, he decided to check the drawers of her dresser.

God. Maybe Mac should have known this was her panty drawer. He blinked dumbly at a lacy pink bra, and his cheeks grew hot. Contrary to his general character, he was still a gentleman at heart. MacCready steered his eyes to the ceiling and grazed the articles with his fingertips alone. Much to his luck, he felt a box, which turned out to be a carton of Greys. So as to not be suspicious, he fingered only a few into his trouser pockets, resealed the box, and stuffed it securely into place.

It was then he heard the music cease. The needle on his “oh shit” meter made a full rotation. If he could burst her bubble by standing motionless, imagine her fury when she saw him combing her panty drawer like a...well, like a creep. Quickly he got the fuck out of there and leapt onto the sofa, springs creaking and all, and assumed a natural position.

As the bathroom door cracked open, a breath of steam escaped. Mac casually as ever glanced over. Katy emerged with a mop of wet hair, one hand clutching her towel closed, the other holding her unlatched Pipboy at her side. Noticing him, she stopped humming.

“Oh. I..I thought you were asleep.” She looked sheepishly down at herself, particularly her exposed twiggy, pixie calves. “Sorry,” she squeaked, spinning on her heel and scurrying away.

Mac exhaled a sigh of relief. He remembered a lighter in the kitchen drawer, so he eagerly fetched it. Then, leaning on the island, he went through the motions; _chink,_ light, and a suck of smoke into his chest. The relief was instantaneous. _Like candy_ , he thought, licking his lips.

Now that he could think, the inevitable question came to mind. Boss. What the fuck was her deal?


End file.
